Course Faculty

• Professor Stewart Mennin, (Course Director).  Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, USA.  CEO, Mennin Consulting & Associates, Inc.  
• Professor Henk Schmidt, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Professor Sharon Krackov, Albany Medical College, Albany, New York; Columbia University Medical Center, New York; Associated Medical Schools of New York State, New York.
• Professor Shaul Ben-David, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico, USA (Associate Course Director)

 Biographies

Stewart Mennin has been contributing to innovation in health professions education for more than 25 years. He is Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology and former Assistant Dean for Educational Development and Research at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.  He began his professional career as a basic scientist studying reproductive neuroendocrinology and teaching human anatomy.  In 1978, he changed the focus of his research to medical education and became a co-director of New Mexico’s Primary Care Curriculum, then an innovative community-oriented, problem-based parallel, track at the School of Medicine in New Mexico.  Professor Mennin has published widely and served as an invited consultant in medical education at more than 50 medical schools and heath institutions worldwide.  His experience and expertise include.  He is a member of the editorial board of Medical Teacher and Medical Education.  At the present time Professor Mennin serves as a consultant to the Ministry of Health in Brazil; is a member of the faculty at the Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) at the Education Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) and is co-originator and director of the Essential Skills in Medical Education Course (ESME) for the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE).  http://www.menninconsulting.com

Professor Mennin’s current interests include the application of principles and concepts from complexity science to learning, education and the organization, interaction and development of people working in the health professions. “I believe that schools are best understood as living systems in which learning emerges as a product of the open and free exchange of differences and where the interactions and relationships between things are more important than the things themselves.” 

 Henk Schmidt is a professor of psychology at Erasmus University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and founding dean of its problem-based psychology curriculum. His areas of interest are learning and memory, and he has published extensively on problem-based learning, long-term memory, and the development of expertise in medicine. He is among the most cited Dutch educational psychologists; for instance, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University identified his early 1983 Medical Education article on problem-based learning as the nineties most cited Dutch article in the field. Twice he received the ”Outstanding paper by an established investigator” Award of the American Educational Research Association. In 1996 the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada awarded him an honorary degree. In 2004, the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, announced him to be the winner of its 50,000 Euro international medical education research prize for his work in medical expertise and problem-based learning.

Previously, Henk Schmidt held positions as dean of the faculty of health science of Maastricht University and associate secretary general of the Network of community-oriented educational institutions for health sciences, a WHO-supported NGO. He has been a visiting professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada; the University of Bern, Switzerland; and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In addition he was R. Samuel McLaughlin Professor at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, and Prof. L. Verhaegen Professor at the Limburg University Centre, Diepenbeek, Belgium.

Sharon Krackov is professor of Medical Education, Director of Faculty and Program Development, Associate Director, Sosa Academy of Medical Sciences, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA; Director, Program and Faculty Development, Center for Education Research and Evaluation Columbia University Medical Center, New York, USA;  Educational consultant in faculty and program development Associated Medical Schools of New York State, New York, USA.   Dr. Krackov’s professional activities center on: program and faculty development, recognition and reward for faculty’s scholarly educational work, and professionalism in medical education. She collaborates with faculty in the United States and Europe on: strategic planning, implementation and evaluation of educational initiatives ranging from a new course to reform of the entire curriculum; specific faculty development needs, for example efforts to improve teaching; preparation of scholarly educational presentations and publications; and identifying and assessing professionalism in students, faculty and the institutional culture. She has directed Offices of Medical Education at three US medical schools and has led national and international professional medical education societies. Her scholarly work includes: external funding for medical education, numerous peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international professional conferences.  She serves on the Editorial Board of Medical Teacher.  She earned an MS and Ed.D. in Medical Education from the University of Rochester, Rochester NY USA

Shaul Ben David Professor is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1965.  He has been on the UNM faculty since 1969.  He has extensive research experience in the areas of natural resources, environmental economics and experimental economics, and has been active in Health Economics, student and program evaluation and test development in medical education since 1995., He is professor emeritus from the University of New Mexico. He and served as a research consultant at the Centre for Medical Education, University of Dundee in 2000-2001. Professor Shaul Ben-David is currently serving as the Director of Web-Based Learning at the Israel Center for Medical Simulation (MSR) at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel.

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