Molly Cooke
Molly Cooke, MD, a professor of medicine and an endowed chair in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine, has been selected to receive the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award.
Cooke will receive the award on Saturday, Oct. 28 during the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges in Seattle.
Cooke is the director of the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators, a nationally recognized group of UCSF teachers dedicated to improving education. Made up of the medical school's most outstanding teachers, the academy promotes excellence in teaching, fosters curricular innovation, advances scholarship in medical education, and advocates for teachers and teaching at UCSF.
Cooke has taught for more than 20 years at UCSF. This academic year, Cooke is serving as senior scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and co-directing its Study on Medical Education. The research team Cooke helps oversee will visit 14 medical schools and centers in an effort to analyze the professional development of physicians-in-training at three key points: early exposure to doctoring, third-year clerkships and residency.
Having rediscovered her "first love" of clinical teaching 12 years ago, Cooke has put her many talents to work on curriculum reform, faculty development and administration. She helped lead a major restructuring of the medical school's curriculum and chaired the Clinical Studies Steering Committee in charge of enhancing the third and fourth years of medical school. To give junior faculty in internal medicine greater access to senior faculty, she developed a series of professional development workshops: Introduction to Academic Advancement for new faculty members, Preparing for Appraisal and Voluntary Career Assessment for mid-assistant professors, and Preparing for Promotion for late assistant professors.
Additionally, she helped secure extramural funding for the UCSF Diabetes Management Program, which provides care to more than 500 adult patients in the San Francisco community. The program, which brings together students from three UCSF professional schools (medicine, nursing and pharmacy), is a model for interprofessional clinical care and training.
As a young doctor starting her career at San Francisco General Hospital, Cooke became keenly interested in the care and treatment of patients with HIV/AIDS, and later became founding chair of the hospital's ethics committee. Today, in addition to treating AIDS patients at the local clinic, where she practices one half-day weekly, she is widely recognized for her expertise in the ethical issues associated with HIV illness and resource allocation decisions at urban public hospitals.
In addition to her work as an educator, clinician and researcher, Cooke has developed an outstanding track record in community service at both the local and national levels. At the national level, Cooke is a governor and chapter member of the American College of Physicians, and in April of this year became vice chair of the group's Health and Public Policy Committee. She is also a founding co-director of the AIDS Task Force of the Society of General Internal Medicine.
Cooke earned both her BS in biology and MD degrees from Stanford University and completed her residency and fellowship in internal medicine at UCSF. She is a two-time recipient of the Kaiser Family Foundation teaching award and the UCSF Academic Senate Award for Distinction in Teaching.
The Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Awards were established by the AOA medical honor society in 1988 to provide national recognition to faculty members who have distinguished themselves in medical student education. The award is named for long time AOA executive secretary Robert J. Glaser, MD.
Related Links:
School of Medicine
UCSF's Molly Cooke, Paul Volberding in PBS' "Age of AIDS"
