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GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences Center for Faculty Excellence
October 2024 Staff Spotlight
Excellence in teaching & learning, scholarly endeavors, and leadership are all around us at SMHS. The Center for Faculty Excellence would like to Spotlight our faculty and staff contributions to SMHS, George Washington University, and beyond. Each month we will spotlight faculty and staff from across SMHS, MFA, and Children's. We want to thank our highlighted members for sharing with us their advice and perspectives!
- SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence
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Join the CFE as we highlight Terri Edwards, MEd, MA, who discusses her role as a medical education learning specialist (MELS) in the GW SMHS Office of Student Support (OSS). She discusses the OSS office and its programming and resources for students to enhance and promote their academic journeys, student life, and mental health.
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Biography
Terri Edwards, MEd, MA, a medical education learning specialist (MELS), joined the GWU Office of Student Success in Fall 2021. Terri, her preferred name, uses the pronouns she, her, and hers. She has provided academic support to medical and health science students for the last nine years at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and Eastern Virginia Medical School. At GW SMHS, she works with all students, regardless of program and location. This includes remote and on-campus students. She prioritizes planning and implementing high-quality services for all students to enhance their learning. This includes addressing all potential roadblocks students encounter that limit successful learning. As a Learning Specialist, she focuses on the academic progress and needs of struggling students while also supporting every learner in their academic development. Terri has extensive experience coaching students through didactic courses and exams, clinical training, and exams, as well as national licensing examinations.
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Interview Q/A
How long have you been at GWSMHS? What drew you to your current position?
Terri: I came to GW in the Fall of 2021. Initially, I was hired as a consultant to help develop the GW SMHS Office of Student Support. Over time, there was an identified need for a learning specialist on the team, so I joined as a faculty member in December of 2021.
Being involved with an office from inception and helping to define our identity and niche as an office drew me to the position. Our office is unique in that it is not just academic support that we offer; we also work around three pillars: academic support, mental health, and student life.
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Why did you decide to pursue a career as a medical education learning specialist (MELS)? How did your degree and experiences bring you to GW?
Terri: I entered this field in 2014 when medical education learning specialist (MELS) as a job title or professional association did not yet exist. I was part of an initial group of professionals hired by medical schools around the country hired into this emerging position to provide needed academic support and other services to students.
During a group dinner at an AAMC Learn, Serve, and Lead Conference 2015, we met and decided to call ourselves Medical Education Learning Specialists (MELS) and name our emerging national organization MELS. MELS now meets annually with over 200 members scheduled to attend the upcoming meeting in Seattle in November. As an emerging field, MELS members bring a variety of degrees and experiences to a common task. Mine is primarily in K-12 special education and undergraduate training.
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What are your major responsibilities here at GW?
Terri: My primary responsibility is to provide academic support for all students in GW Medicine. Generally, that is through one-on-one meetings on effective study strategies and test-taking skills. I also meet with students to assist in their preparation for licensing exams. I am also involved in the workshops and events OSS offers for all SMHS students related to academic and mental health supports, and student life resources. Additionally, we plan program-specific initiatives.
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What is your favorite thing about your current role or responsibilities?
Terri: I enjoy working with students and being a part of a team. I view my role as a team member with each student as we work together to enhance their academic development. From the onset, I strive to establish a connection with each student. The student and I can foster a team bond when we are both on a first-name basis. I provide guidance and suggestions on a tailored plan of action for each of them to consider. We then work to identify aspects of research-based learning practice they may not be implementing and devise plans for them to implement them more effectively.
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The Office of Student Support (OSS) provides various support services to learners at SMHS. Can you tell us more about some of the workshops, programs, and services your office provides?
Terri: Our department has many amazing staff members who support students in various ways. We encourage students to join us at our upcoming events!
Within academic support, that can mean anything from support with time management, meeting with our writing coach, or working on CVs or resumes. Our office staff is available to help students navigate those issues. Students may also need editorial support and guidance to write effective personal statements across all the programs, so we have them meet with our writing coach and people within our office. We also hold workshops that are more targeted to the needs of specific programs. For instance, a student in a remote program may need guidance on how to finish this semester strong as a remote learner and manage their workload and time. OSS may also help them feel more connected with the greater GW community. We provide services to students who are starting to think about and study for various licensing exams. These students often need help analyzing the practice tests and in-house exams that they are taking to better identify their strengths and weaknesses. Our team guides students on different study strategies that are usually program specific.
Within student life, we have a wellness committee, and we introduce students to different offices - which is what students need the most. We encourage students to come to us with questions about what offices or resources to seek. We have great wellness initiatives like therapy dogs, painting, pop-up raffles that enter you to win a prize, and trick-or-treating events coming up at the end of this month.
OSS also has a mental health pillar. This is an extremely important part of our job. We connect the students with Talkspace, which is a resource available to all the GW medicine students, and make sure they are also familiar with the Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) office. We work closely with the Resiliency & Wellbeing Center. We collaborate on many activities and events and often connect students directly with that center.
We have a monthly newsletter that promotes all our upcoming workshops and event information called The Hippocampus. This newsletter is a great tool to give students information about a variety of topics as well. For example, we have recently highlighted voting information, as many of our students may vote while living in a different location. It also provides information on free or low-cost activities around DC. We provide cool activities for our remote learners, such as information on virtual museum tours, so even if you are not physically on or near campus, you can still feel connected to the cultural things that are part of DC. We encourage everyone to subscribe to our newsletter!
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What do you want faculty to know about the OSS? How can we better direct learners that we work with to your office?
Terri: Faculty can refer students to our office directly through our office email or by contacting me directly. Faculty should provide us with some information about the purpose of the referral and the student's information so that we can contact that student and proceed from there. Faculty can also have the student contact us directly with any support they seek.
Referrals to OSS could be students who simply want to talk through an issue or concern they may be experiencing that may pose some sort of difficulty. Students may want objective feedback or an outside perspective on an issue, and we can provide that. These are confidential conversations with the students so they can feel comfortable seeking our support in certain situations. We sometimes navigate this through role-playing with the student, helping them better articulate what they may be having difficulty expressing in a more effective way.
Alex Velto, our associate program director, and Emma Smith, our program coordinator within the OSS, host our office hours, during which faculty and students can drop in without an appointment. Alex and Emma also travel to various locations within the Foggy Bottom and VTSC campuses to spend time with our faculty and students, giving them an opportunity to have casual conversations as well.
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What about the future of the OSS and GW excites you?
Terri: Our office is continuously growing, allowing us to expand our outreach to the community through more creative flyers and events, which is very exciting. The other thing that I'm excited about is multiple-year internal surveys, evaluations, and quality improvement studies of our initiatives. We are developing a database for systematic assessments of student development and program effectiveness. We are also reaching out to students and learning from them what we are not providing that they need. What kinds of things would you like to see more of? How effective is it when you seek our support? Analyzing this information and building upon ensures our office provides optimal and effective support to students.
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What impact do you hope to have on trainees, colleagues, and peers?
Terri: I want to help others understand how to implement research-based practices from the science of learning. The programming and resources we provide are based on research and are extremely valuable and helpful tools for students. When students develop study and learning strategies based on evidence-based research and best practices, the impact can be profound.
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What are you looking forward to working on or doing here at GW?
Terri: I want OSS to have strong connections with each department and program. One program's needs may not be the same as another’s. Similarly, what one cohort needs may change each year. With this information, we can provide targeted support based on certain criteria of needs. We have also done some experimenting with our offerings to see what works and doesn’t, which we use to guide future decisions. We like to advertise what we're doing with different programs and spur conversations with other programs to think about things they could do that would be unique to the needs of their students and benefit all our learners.
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How does this spotlight/recognition make you feel?
Terri: I was very honored to be asked to be recognized in this way! Our office is very new, and some people may not yet be aware of what we offer. It is great to have OSS’s work highlighted in this way.
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What is one thing that keeps you motivated during the day
Terri: Several things keep me motivated. One thing that motivates me, stems from my time working in K-12 education where I often got to be the first person of the day to greet a student with a smile and encouragement. I am motivated when seeing the glimmer in a student's eyes when they no longer feel intimidated by the exam or the workload.
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