In a partnership between the UCSF Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy, Cees van der Vleuten, PhD, has been selected as a 2018-19 UCSF Presidential Chair to focus on our medical education community as a visiting professor. In this role, Dr. van der Vleuten will offer invaluable guidance to the leaders and faculty of our educational programs as we work to provide the highest quality assessment and learning ecosystem for our community so that all can learn, grow, and thrive.
Dr. van der Vleuten is a leader in assessment for learning, in which assessments are synthesized to depict learners’ progress through a curriculum. He will collaborate with the Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy to implement assessment for learning and programmatic assessment as a model for all UCSF schools, as well as those nationally. Importantly, Dr. van der Vleuten is the first educational scholar to be awarded the UCSF Presidential Chair. He offers UCSF a perspective about assessment that shifts from performance, to learning.
In this year-long appointment, Dr. van der Vleuten will collaborate with UCSF education leaders and faculty, provide presentations and facilitate local work in assessment for learning and programmatic assessment. His Med Ed Grand Rounds "Programmatic Assessment for Preparing Better Health Professionals" will be held Feb. 20, 2019, at HSW-300 Parnassus. Online registration is here.
The School of Nursing has a unique opportunity, given our upcoming CCNE accreditation reviews, to invite Dr. van der Vleuten to meet with Program Councils as well as with the full faculty to discuss learning and program assessment. Associate Dean Maureen Shannon will arrange such meetings.
Appointing a Presidential Chair whose main focus is education sends a powerful message to the community that designing and implementing high-quality educational programs is a scholarly endeavor. His input will be critical to the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, which are undergoing significant curricular renewal initiatives. He will also provide valuable advice and input to the School of Nursing, which is undergoing two accreditation reviews. Dr. van der Vleuten is an internationally renowned leader in educational assessment whose contributions to medical education have evolved over two decades of work. He is Scientific Director of The Maastricht School of Health Professions in The Netherlands, where he developed the assessment framework for several faculty training programs—whereby the school collects ongoing formative data on each learner to plot individual progress.
An engaged and dedicated mentor for learners and faculty, Dr. van der Vleuten has consulted worldwide on programmatic assessment and has published over 600 articles in this field. In 2005, he received the John P. Hubbard Award for his significant contribution to research and development of assessment of medical competence from the United States National Board of Medical Examiners. In 2010, he received a Dutch Royal Decoration for the societal impact of his work, and in 2012, the Karolinska Prize for Research in Medical Education. These awards represent the highest accolades in medical education.