The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) recently honored Indiana University School of Medicine Executive Vice Dean Stephen P. Bogdewic, PhD, with one of its highest awards.
Bogdewic received the F. Marian Bishop Leadership Award, which honors individuals who have “significantly enhanced the credibility of family medicine by a sustained, long-term commitment to family medicine in academic settings.” The award is named in honor of F. Marian Bishop, the first female and first PhD president of STFM who is often referred to as “the mother of academic family medicine.”
Bogdewic, who has served on the school’s executive leadership team for nearly 15 years, got his academic start in family medicine at the University of North Carolina, where he directed a national faculty development fellowship program. He joined IU School of Medicine in 1991 as an associate professor of family medicine.
He has published extensively on topics such as organizational and faculty development, faculty vitality, the state of family medicine research, medical student attitudes toward older patients, and other topics related to evidence-based teaching of family medicine. He is a frequent lecturer at medical schools around the country and is a past president of STFM.
“It was my good fortune almost forty years ago to be invited into the discipline of family medicine,” Bogdewic said. “I believed then and still do that, as Rex Murray, the Canadian journalist once stated, ‘The practice of medicine at a family level has to be the almost cellular foundation of a proper national understanding of what health care is.’ Armed with that belief, it seemed to me that the only right thing to do in my career was whatever I could to strengthen and promote family medicine. To be recognized by my peers for doing what I thought was right is both humbling and affirming.”
In addition to his role in family medicine, Bogdewic has provided critical leadership across all missions of IU School of Medicine.
A firm believer that we must invest in and support our faculty, he established the Office of Faculty Affairs and Professional Development (now Faculty Affairs, Professional Development and Diversity) and served as its first executive associate dean from 2005 until 2014.
During that time, he created the Leadership in Academic Medicine Program (LAMP) and many other faculty development initiatives aimed at helping faculty accomplish their career goals. He also championed the importance of adding more women to leadership positions and dramatically increased the number of women appointed to lead standing faculty committees.
In 2014, Bogdewic accepted the new role of executive vice dean and for the past several years has overseen school-wide strategic planning, departmental reviews, and strategic alignment with the health care system. He is retiring from IU School of Medicine in late June 2019 after nearly three decades with the school.