Following on four decades in academic medicine and educational administration, I’m very much enjoying the opportunity to develop skills in historical scholarship with the wonderful faculty in the Department of the History of Medicine and with my colleagues in the online masters program.

I am a native of Lexington, Kentucky, and a graduate of the University of Kentucky and of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.  I then trained in internal medicine at Northwestern University/McGaw Medical Center and joined the faculty in their nascent academic general internal medicine division in 1985.  After serving as internal medicine clerkship director and a clinical firm chief I was then vice dean for education at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine from 1998 to 2014. Since 2015 I have served in a similar role, senior associate dean for educational affairs, at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, which is based in Chicago with regional campuses in Peoria and Rockford, Illinois.

My academic interests include the study and teaching of doctor-patient communication, access to medical education for those under-represented in the profession, including students with disabilities, and the history of medical education – the latter interest driving my involvement in the masters program.  I am currently serving as a member of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body for MD-degree programs in the US, and the Advisory Council for the Chicago Area Albert Schweitzer Fellowships program.  I have also in the past been involved in leadership of the Academy of Communication in Healthcare, the Provident Foundation, and the Northern Illinois chapter of the American College of Physicians.

My evolving masters thesis is embedded in Progressive era Chicago, and explores the relationships between physicians connected with Jane Addams’ Hull House and local medical schools, with particular attention to contemporary concepts of social hygiene and eugenics.

My wife, Dr. Kristi Kirschner, and I are the parents of two adult sons; we live in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.