UW News

June 27, 2002

Surawicz named assistant dean for faculty development

UW Health Sciences/UW Medicine

Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, has named Dr. Christina M. Surawicz to the newly created position of assistant dean for faculty development. Surawicz is a professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and chief of gastroenterology at Harborview Medical Center.

In her new role, Surawicz will design, implement and coordinate faculty development programs across the medical school. These will cover job skills and teaching, research, and clinical requirements as well as career growth. The new assistant dean will tell faculty about professional development opportunities within the medical school and at the UW, and will encourage participation.

Examples of Surawicz’s responsibilities include continuing to plan and institute faculty development programs for both junior and senior faculty members, conducting surveys to identify faculty development issues, meeting with department chairs to create mentoring programs, maintaining an online newsletter to promote faculty development activities, reporting to the Medical School Executive Committee on the status of faculty development efforts, and working with department chairs, assistant deans and associate deans to establish resources for enhancing faculty development.

Surawicz has chaired the Standing Committee on Issues of Women Faculty at the UW School of Medicine. Nationally, she was the first woman president of the American College of Gastroenterology. Along with her extensive research publications and textbooks on gastrointestinal infections and diseases, Surawicz gives practical tips on career advancement to her medical colleagues across the country through workshops and articles. In addition, she serves on a working group in the UW Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, which has as one of its goals to increase women’s leadership in academic medicine. Surawicz is also a co-investigator on the Appeal project at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The project looks at exercise in colon cancer prevention.

Surawicz was born in Munich, Germany, shortly after World War II. Her mother was a psychiatrist from The Netherlands, and her father was a cardiologist from Poland. Her family moved to the United States in 1951. She attended Barnard College in New York and medical school at the University of Kentucky. She completed her residency at UW.

Surawicz and her husband, Dr. Jim Bushyhead, have three teenage sons.