After 27 years of service, former Associate Provost and Professor of Medicine Mary Lee will leave Tufts this fall to assume the prestigious six-month Kimitaka Kaga Visiting Professorship at the University of Tokyos Graduate School of Medicine.
A formal farewell reception for Lee, who stepped down from her position as associate provost on Jan. 15, will be held today at 9 a.m. in Ballou Hall. Until her official departure in the fall, Lee said she will retain her roles as a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine, as well as one of its special advisors for education innovation.
The visiting professorship is an established, highly selective position for which the University of Tokyo selects a new senior medical educator from around the world each year, according to Lee.
Ill be helping them with ... their first accreditation, curriculum reform, clinical teaching [and] integration of technology into their educational programs, Lee said. Its really the opportunity of a lifetime.
After graduating from Tufts in 1975, Leereceived her masters in Health Services Research and Asian Studies from Stanford University, only to return to Tufts for medical school and her residency. She then began working at the Tufts Medical Center.
After seven years of medical school and residency, I was [actually] planning on practicing in the community, Lee said. But I had really enjoyed teaching ... [Tufts] offered me the job to run the [third-year medicine] clerkship for students. So, it still was a difficult decision because I felt like it was time to be at a different institution, but they convinced me to try it, and I loved it so much I never left.
Between 1994 and 2006, Lee served as the first dean for educational affairs at the School of Medicine, where she helped develop open access initiatives such as the Tufts University Science Knowledgebase , a curriculum management system medical schools across the globe now use, according to Dean of Student Affairs at the Medical School Amy Kuhlik.
Now [TUSK is in] a lot of medical schools, but this was ahead of the time, and Mary was way ahead of the curve back when this was done in the late 1990s, Kuhlik said.
Additionally, Kuhlik noted that Lee was responsible for consolidating curricular development, as well as instituting faculty development and leadership training programs.
Mary was very interested in faculty development and really introduced that whole concept at Tufts, she said. We have a very robust faculty development [program] here, that she left sort of as her legacy.
Lee carried over her emphasis on faculty development to the university as a whole when she became associate provost, Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser said. He explained that this focus was particularly important for her role as chair of the university-wide Committee for Teaching and Faculty Development.
What happens in the schools is often very different, but there are some common issues, and there are some ways that we can learn from each other, Glaser said. This committee, which Mary was the primary force behind, tried to leverage the best practices across all the ... schools and help us get better by being less silo-ed ... Its hard to learn from each other and cooperate, but under her leadership we really did.
As associate provost, Lee was also involved in Tufts organizations, like the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, the Tufts Academic Leadership Development Program and the University Seminar.
In addition to her work supporting faculty development, Lee said she focused much of her attention on the integration of technology into education.
Ive [helped] faculty think about moving their content into open access venues, so that it can be shared with not just students in the classroom, but with students around the world, she said.
Lee explained that the Office of the Provost is currently searching for her successor as associate provost and is working to restructure the office to best support the new strategic plan.
Those will be very big shoes to fill, Glaser said. No matter how dramatic things get in Ballou [Hall], Mary [has] ... always been a sea of calm. And she [has] just been a wonderful colleague. It will be very strange to be here without her.
