Ike Wood appointed senior associate dean in VCU School of Medicine

By Leila Ugincius

Dr. Isaac K. "Ike" Wood has been appointed senior associate dean for medical education and student affairs in the VCU School of Medicine, effective July 1.

Wood, director of undergraduate medical education in psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, succeeds Jim Messmer, M.D, who guided the undergraduate medical education program for 16 years. One of Wood's first charges will be to lead the process of designing a new curriculum and developing the programming for the new School of Medicine building.

Wood's affiliation with VCU has spanned 30 years. After graduating in 1982 from the School of Medicine, he stayed to complete an internship and residency in general psychiatry and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry.

For the past three years Wood has served as associate dean of student affairs in the School of Medicine. He has received the school's top educational awards, including the Faculty Teaching Award and the Educational Innovation Award. He has received the award for the Outstanding Professor in the Behavioral Sciences every year since 1999. In addition, the medical school class of 1997 selected Wood as Teacher of the Year.

Wood's projects have included creating a virtual psychosis laboratory where students may experience the debilitating effects of severe mental illness; Project HEART (Healing with Empathy, Acceptance, Respect and inTegrity), a nationally recognized program for helping students maintain humanism and altruism; and a comprehensive four-year career planning curriculum that was recently recognized by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education accreditation team as a strength of the school.

A Harvard Macy Scholar, Wood is a Fellow of the National Board of Medical Examiners for Self-Directed Learning and a peer reviewer for MedEdPortal and FOCUS, the continuing medical education journal of the American Psychiatric Association. He currently is in his fourth year as a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners Behavioral Science Committee and the United Stated Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 Behavioral Sciences Test Material Development Committee.