“Education is the foundation of transformative health care and scientific discovery. RISE aspires to create a Michigan Medicine culture where bold, scalable education innovations impact health and science, and thrive through collaboration and access to a broad, diverse network of resources, expertise, and stakeholders. Empowered by this culture, all faculty, staff, and learners embrace curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, initiative, and intelligent risk-taking to support education experimentation and discovery.”

We are proud to share our 2019-20 annual report, which describes our first year’s efforts in building a community of practice and cultivating a culture of innovation in health sciences education. Our annual report outlines our initial steps in creating this strategic initiative and highlights our major achievements—which include defining and adopting health science education innovation competencies, recruiting our first cohorts of fellows and mini-grant recipients, connecting members of our community, and providing resources to foster education innovation at Michigan Medicine and beyond. The report also describes the novel Virtual Talking Circles that bring innovators together each month for creative dialogue that promotes experimentation and exposure to innovation strategies. We also outline plans for growth by highlighting a few of our next key initiatives, such as addressing system-level issues to accelerate education innovation at Michigan Medicine.

The focus of Research. Innovation. Scholarship. Education. (RISE) is to build the foundation for an innovation Community of Practice that engages in bold new translational educational practices for both physicians and scientists to improve learning and teaching for better health.

Our work aligns with the Education Pillar of the Medical School Strategic Plan, to cultivate a learning community that engages all in bold and innovative education for the advancement of science, health and health care delivery.