Darrell Kirch
Darrell Kirch, MD, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), will deliver the keynote address during the eighth annual celebration honoring new members of the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators.
Kirch is a distinguished physician, educator, and medical scientist, and an expert on the organization and management of academic medical centers. His career spans all aspects of academic medicine and includes leadership positions at two medical schools and teaching hospitals, as well as at the National Institutes of Health.
The campus community is invited to hear Kirch, who will present “Can Educators be Leaders?” on Monday, Sept. 15, from 4 to 5 p.m. in the School of Nursing building, room N 225, on the UCSF Parnassus campus.
During the annual celebration, nine of the UCSF School of Medicine’s top teachers will be inducted as new members of the Academy of Medical Educators, which is dedicated to creating an environment that enhances the status of teachers of medical students at UCSF, promotes and rewards teaching excellence, fosters curricular innovation, and encourages scholarship in medical education.
The new members of the academy are:
• Leila Alpers, MD, MS, medicine
• Amin Azzam, MD, MA, psychiatry
• Richard Breiman, MD, radiology
• Lee-may Chen, MD, obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences
• Katherine Hyland, PhD, biochemistry and biophysics
• S. Andrew Josephson, MD, neurology
• Anda Kuo, MD, pediatrics
• John Maa, MD, surgery
• Kevin Mack, MD, psychiatry
Before taking the helm of the AAMC in 2006, Kirch served as the Pennsylvania State University's senior vice president for health affairs, dean of Penn State College of Medicine, and chief executive officer of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
Kirch served as dean of the school of medicine at the Medical College of Georgia from 1994 to 2000. In 1995, he also became the dean of the school of graduate studies, and in 1998, he took on the additional role of senior vice president for clinical activities, a newly created position overseeing the hospitals and clinical practices of the institution. Earlier in his career, Kirch served in a number of leadership positions at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, including as medical director of the Neuropsychiatric Research Hospital. He became acting scientific director of the NIMH in 1993. Kirch is a graduate of the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, where he also completed his residency training in psychiatry.
The AAMC is a not-for-profit association representing all 129 accredited US and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 68 department of veterans affairs medical centers; and 94 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 109,000 faculty members, 67,000 medical students, and 104,000 resident physicians.
