What's in it for me: impacts for mentors of scholarly concentration programs in medical education

The format of medical education has changed little in the last 100 years. In contrast, an unparalleled explosion in healthcare discovery has expanded the armamentarium of tools available to the 21st Century physician beyond the capacity of any single person to master. New pedagogical approaches are required that teach medical students how to critically analyze, incorporate, and advance the practice of medicine when all this data is right at their fingertips. Scholarly concentrations (SC) programs are one emerging strategy for engaging students in the process of discovery across medical disciplines. Yet the project-based component of SC programs relies heavily upon time inputs from already strained faculty mentors. Does project mentorship benefit faculty, or are SC programs a sunk cost? The following research investigates various impacts of SC project mentorship for faculty at the University of California, San Francisco to determine whether benefits exist beyond student outcomes.