Staff Award for Excellence - Peggy Engel

Peggy Engel is an exemplary person and colleague. She is incredibly skilled in her work performance. Not only does she effectively manage three fellowship programs, but her resilience was also tested over the past two years, first with the pandemic and multiple changes to the training program, and second with a complete leadership team change in July 2021 (new Program Director, new Associate Program Directors, and new chief fellows). Peggy smoothly navigated all these changes with incredible reliability and professionalism.

Peggy is the epitome of organization and efficiency. Her work ethic is evident, and she is often working very early in the mornings, late in the evenings, and on weekends. She is always enthusiastically willing to take on a challenge. Her institutional knowledge has been invaluable during the transition to a new program director. Her sage advice is highly valued by faculty and fellows alike.

Peggy is an incredible leader here at Michigan Medicine and at the national level. Her leadership qualities include her ability to develop a strong vision supported by core values. She has led several projects to improve medical education. One example of her leadership has been her focus on ways that program administrators can foster an environment to promote fellow wellness. She presented this work at FACET (Fellowship Administrators in Cardiovascular Education and Training) during the American College of Cardiology National Meeting.

Peggy is always willing to help others and serves as a role model for other administrators and educators. She is highly effective, efficient, and forward-thinking. There are countless examples of tasks that have come up for the fellowship program and Peggy volunteers, “I could do that.” 

Peggy is an incredibly warm, kind, and generous person. Her presence is reassuring to applicants when they interview for our competitive fellowship training program. She is also incredibly welcoming to the new incoming fellows, who are often anxious when joining a new institution. Current fellows frequently find personal treats from Peggy in their mailboxes or in the fellows’ office. She helps recognize holidays or difficult times of the year, which helps the fellowship training program feel like a family. Peggy has a very positive “can do” attitude. She cares deeply about the fellows and has undertaken several initiatives to help their wellbeing. She recently created gift bags for each individual fellow for our inaugural fellow appreciation day. Each bag included a Michigan t-shirt (correctly sized for each fellow), maize and blue colored popcorn, and various treats. She also wrote messages of encouragement all over their whiteboard. This is just one example of the many ways that Peggy makes each fellow feel connected in our program.

Peggy works continuously to optimize the fellowship rotation schedules, work hours, clinic processes, faculty evaluations, leadership meetings, and fellow wellness initiatives. During the pandemic, her innovative spirit led to vital adaptations which positively impacted our trainees. For current fellows, she organized all the online conferences and meetings and implemented creative ways to show appreciation for the fellows. She has developed and maintained our fellowship website and done a superb job of displaying the various strengths and culture of our training program to prospective applicants. During recruitment, she received suggestions from current fellows about how to optimize the virtual interviewing experience. In addition to coordinating with each individual applicant during recruitment, she also organized dinner gift certificates for each candidate based on input from our fellows. She is always searching for ways to improve our program administrative processes.