As a result, medical professors' energies are diverted away from teaching: doctors, hard-pressed to be more efficient and to see more patients, have less time for their students.

"You can't hide teaching in research and clinical work the way faculty did years ago," said Dr. Molly Cooke, director of the initiative at UCSF.

The Academy initiative essentially creates a funding mechanism for teaching.

"The whole point is to address a structural limitation which prevents disbursement of resources from optimally supporting the teaching mission of medical school, because of the competing research and clinical components," Lowenstein said.

Currently, associate professors at medical schools are supposed to put in 50 hours of teaching per year, while full professors are expected to teach 100 hours per year. But Lowenstein said medical professors often cannot meet those expectations.

Hopefully, the initiative will fill the huge demand for teaching time for lectures, but especially for clinical teaching, which often occurs on a one-on-one basis.

While the Academy will only pay for a fraction of full professors, it will assist members on two fronts. Stipends will be given to professors to develop teaching programs or simply to teach. In addition, some members of the Academy will serve as endowment chairs for a period of three to five years, during which their teaching activities will be funded by interest from the endowment.