Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Michigan Promise Blog!

What is the Michigan Promise?

The Michigan Promise represents a longitudinal investment in the faculty of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan, recognizing that success is due to the talent, commitment, and vision of its faculty. We pledge that we will support each individual to achieve their full professional and academic potential. The Michigan Promise ensures that faculty within our Department, and our community as a whole, realize our goals as the Leaders and Best.

Our mission is to:

1. Prepare each surgeon to achieve the highest excellence in clinical care, research, and education.
2. Build a diverse and inclusive culture in which all individuals advance and thrive.
3. Recruit the best and brightest clinicians and scientists to the Department of Surgery.
4. Create innovative strategies for ongoing professional growth and scientific discovery.
5. Develop the most talented and progressive leaders in academic medicine.
6. Expand outreach and service to local, regional, national, and global partners.

Within these missions, we have created defined strategies to reach these goals and each initiative is open to all faculty members within the Department of Surgery across rank, track, and specialty. The Michigan Promise is designed to accelerate achievement and ensure that our environment allows all individuals to achieve excellence and professional satisfaction. Because our faculty play a central role in executing the mission of the Department of Surgery, these efforts are integrated as a core value of equal importance to other core departmental values.

Each initiative within the Michigan Promise is coordinated and executed through the Department of Surgery Office of Faculty Life, addressing challenges of achieving excellence in clinical care, teaching, research, diversity, and equity in modern academic medicine.

What will the blog do?

The Michigan Promise is a long-term commitment to faculty development and an effort to change the face of American Surgery for the next generation. We have selected six areas of focus – Environment, Achievement, Leadership, Recruitment, Innovation and Outreach. Each issue of the blog will be dedicated to one of these topics. We plan to share our work in these domains with the surgical community, to highlight what works and what doesn’t, and to spark discussion of the issues of our day. Each issue will contain how-to information, research data and examples of works in progress. The blog will be posted on the first and third Monday of each month. Explore the blog →

Article By Michael Mulholland, MD