Society moves to restructure educational line for members
ASPS education is at its best when it feels immediately relevant – a session that answers a pressing question in clinic, a module that updates your technique or a pathway that helps close a gap in your practice. As the Society's educational portfolio has grown over time, learning opportunities have also been spread across various products and platforms. Although members agree the offerings provide great content, they also note it can sometimes feel harder to see the "connective tissue" or strategic throughline.
"When presented with the existing ASPS education line committees, I noted a lot of redundancy and scant communication between groups that were tasked with similar projects," says ASPS/PSF Board Vice President of Education Peter Taub, MD, MS, New York. "In aesthetic education alone, there were upward of five separate committees with numerous members – some who did most of the work and many who often had little input into the actions of the committees.
"It makes sense for a single committee to be charged with creating education regarding a topic – such as craniomaxillofacial surgery – across all ASPS education, rather than many separate committees for each educational endeavor," he adds.
With that in mind, ASPS is reorganizing how education is planned, built and evaluated based on the way that members actually practice – in order to deliver the most meaningful education on the most relevant, timely topics. This restructure is designed to make each member's experience with ASPS educational offerings more targeted, coherent and valuable.
Each major focus area in plastic surgery now has dedicated leadership responsible for building a robust educational strategy for that topic area. This allows ASPS to be more intentional about what's taught, when it's taught and how the Society can connect learning across formats and offerings, so that education in each domain can build a purposeful portfolio.
By centering governance on topic areas, ASPS can better identify the questions members are asking right now, clinical challenges surfacing across the specialty and practice changes that demand attention. The outcome should be programming that feels less "one-size-fits-all" and more like a curated, continuously improving roadmap for each area of plastic surgery.
"Committee members will be able to interact with a smaller, more cohesive group of colleagues who share similar interests and work together to create educational programming across the Society's entire robust educational menu," Dr. Taub says.
Whether members engage through meetings, online learning or other educational channels, the Society's goal is stronger alignment and less duplication. Topic-focused leadership improves the ability to coordinate learning objectives and standards across different formats – helping ensure that what can be learned in one place is reinforced, expanded and advanced elsewhere.
The restructure also strengthens the Society's ability to evaluate initiatives against defined goals. When an offering isn't meeting its objectives or no longer addresses members' most pressing needs, governance can work to redesign, refocus or simply step away from it.
"It shouldn't mean less education, but better stewardship of member time and Society resources – with a sharper focus on outcomes and value," Dr. Taub says.
Changed structure
If you currently volunteer with ASPS educational initiatives (or are considering it), the restructure creates clearer leadership lanes and more intuitive pathways to contribute. Topic-area "governorships" will lead the work, with each topic area led by a governor and vice governor, each accountable for the overall educational strategy and priorities within that domain. (For aesthetic education, the governorship is structured with two subdivisions to reflect the breadth of the space.) Under each governorship, volunteer work will be organized to support the educational portfolio across the Society's key delivery channels.
For more-established programs (e.g., Annual Meeting, Spring Meeting, In-Service, etc.) the "committees" will change to "councils" that only include the chair and vice-chair of the overall program/initiative. The Annual Meeting Council, for example, will only consist of the chair, chair-elect and vice-chair. All topic-specific workgroups will be composed of volunteers from the governorships, so that there is a team responsible for the overarching strategy of the event, program or initiative – while also retaining the benefit of consistency from the governorship topic structure.
For smaller products, the work will shift into the governorship structure, and the standalone committee will be sunset. This integration reduces fragmentation, creates a clearer home for ongoing work and helps leadership coordinate and prioritize initiatives more effectively within each topic area.
To place volunteers thoughtfully in this updated structure, all current education line volunteers will be asked to complete the member committee interest application this year. The application window is open through April 30. This is an important step in aligning expertise with the right topic areas and types of work.
"Ultimately, this restructure is about delivering education that feels more connected to your practice, more responsive to what's happening in the specialty and more accountable to impact," Dr. Taub says. "It's a shift from managing individual offerings to managing strategy – so that the Society's education continues to be not only high quality but meaningfully aligned with what members need most. I'm excited for a more nimble, efficient and dynamic interchange between active and engaged committee members and ASPS staff."