Monica Watkins is currently working as a fellowship administrator in Mississippi. She explains how students move from medical school, to residency to potentially a fellowship. Monica stresses the importance of staying up with emails and communicating with the various divisions and other programs. She also speaks to educating oneself on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Monica concludes this interview with addressing the topic of work life balance.

Julie Byington is a senior residency coordinator of a large program. She has particularly good wisdom for new administrators on how to work with a program director or supervisor. Managing the recruitment process of new residents is one of her specialties and she shares tips on what is sometimes a consuming three month period from recruitment to the final rankings ending with the spring “Match Day”. Julie emphasizes that the ACGME website is not just about the guidelines but about the many resources available to administrators on topics from how to conduct a meeting to how to do a specific process. Julie enjoys problem solving and her role with process improvement. She also explains the term WEBADS and the importance of professional development and networking.

Brittany Davis is a medical education coordinator. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the cyclical nature of the job. She explains that what you do in January of this year you are doing next January. Brittany also discusses how she recommends managing the process of mastering ACGME/LCME guidelines.

Douglas Ruiz is a program coordinator for a residency program and works with a team of eleven coordinators. Douglas has been involved in the Alliance of Internal Academic Medicine for several years and talks about the importance of finding a mentor and getting involved. He shares tips on communicating with the program director/supervisor, managing the consumption of ACGME guidelines, and managing well being. Tune in to listen to his advice on being mindful of DEI.

Stefanie Cordoue, a fellowship coordinator, talks about the importance of getting involved as a member of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine. She describes how she volunteered and the value it has brought to her career. Stephanie also explains what the most rewarding part of the job is. She discusses how she mastered the ACGME guidelines by printing out relevant web pages and placing a tab on relevant guidelines. She also comments on the administrator's role in the evaluation process and assisting students with the Visa process but stresses the importance of avoiding burnout.

Whitney Harper, an experienced undergraduate and graduate medical school administrator, provides advice for incoming administrators. Some of the topics covered are the administrator's role with recruiting new trainees, scheduling responsibilities, protecting your well-being, and managing ACGME/LCME guidelines.

David Kelly, Executive Director of a community of practice called The Learning Guild, speaks about the impact of the pandemic on corporate learning and development. He also addresses how the association has coped with not being able to hold in-person meetings. The November DevLearn conference was held in-person in Las Vegas and he highlights how it was done safely. He discusses the headline events like the Demo Fest where practitioners are able to show off their eLearning projects. Other important topics were discussed at Dev Learn such as the growing use of Virtual Reality and workshops on authoring systems and the ongoing interest in microlearning and XAPI for improved data collection. Lastly David addresses one of the key contributions the Learning Guild makes to the corporate Learning & Development Community and that is research. Reports come out monthly on topics such as using personality testing to using video to how to procure the right technologies.

This podcast interview with Kevin Ordonez celebrates the upcoming November 10th Solutions Day in Chicago. Solutions Day provides association executives an opportunity to network and learn. With his partner Sherry Budziak they have created three organizations: .OrgSource, .OrgCommunity and .OrgFreelancer. In this interview Kevin discusses why he felt the Chicago community needed a organization that was committed to networking and education for association executives. Kevin addresses the impact on the association tech stack of consolidation. He also discusses the impact of the pandemic on associations and on their approach to online learning. He addresses the ubiquitous nature of webcams and the acceptance of virtual meetings as a plus for the association online learning business plan.

In Episode Eight Jon Aleckson and Matt Harpold interview a CourseStage LMS customer, John Poeltler, an Instructional Technologist with the American Medical Technologists association. The American Medical Technologists (AMT) is a nonprofit certification agency and professional membership association representing over 100,000 individuals in allied health care. Established in 1939, AMT has been providing allied health professionals with professional certification services and membership programs to enhance their professional and personal growth. Matt and Jon were most excited to interview John Poeltler because he cut his teeth working in eLearning for corporations like John Deere. This makes John an authority on the difference between corporate learning management systems (LMS) and those LMS’s purposefully designed for communities of practice like AMT. Originally, as it related to online education, AMT focused on providing a certification exam for medical technicians. Today, AMT is growing their online course development department and adding online coursework to improve member’s practice in the field. This includes using the LMS for virtual events that are both live and recorded. Listen and learn the difference between the approach corporations take towards online learning and the approach national associations take towards the advancement of continuing education.

Jon & Matt sit down with Celisa Steele Co-Founder & Managing Director for Tagoras and discuss the Learning Business Maturity Model, which articulates the characteristics of a mature market-facing learning business or line of business, as well as the stages that typically precede full maturity. Tagoras developed it based on the common problems and opportunities they’ve seen in through years of working with a wide range of learning businesses. The model’s framework helps you assess your organization’s capabilities and problem areas and provides a clear path so you can move from problem to opportunity to innovation by focusing on the five domains of the model: Leadership, Strategy, Capacity, Portfolio & Marketing.