Besides channeling funding for professors to pursue educational work, the Academy will also function as a community of faculty members committed to teaching.

Specific criteria for choosing Academy members have not yet been determined, but the overriding factor will be commitment to teaching--those professors who have "a passion for teaching, a willingness to commit time to teaching and a reputation as being an innovator or role model educator," Lowenstein said.

Administrators at both HMS and UCSF are raising funds for the endowment, seeking both private donations as well as institutional grants.

Dr. Kenneth M. Ludmerer, a professor of medicine and history at

Washington University and an expert on the history of medical schools, said this new initiative is a turning point.

"It has great possibilities," Ludmerer said. "Medical professors have been rewarded much more for research than for teaching. The Academy of medical educators has merit to it, as it seeks to create an endowment to support educational activities rather than research or patient care."

Lowenstein said he hopes the program will help shift HMS's overall priorities.

"The biggest effect of the Academy will be to provide resources to allow our best teachers to teach," Lowenstein said. "The Academy will embody a new entity with a single focus: the support of the teaching mission."