Mark E. Servis, M.D.
Vice Dean for Medical Education and leads the Office of Medical Education
Mark E. Servis is Vice Dean for Medical Education and leads the Office of Medical Education. He is responsible for all aspects of undergraduate medical education including medical student admissions, student support services such as advising, financial aid and student wellness, and works collaboratively with faculty on medical school curriculum. Servis coordinates these educational activities with the programs in graduate medical education, continuing medical education, and other schools of health including the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, health informatics, and public health.
During his tenure as Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education, Servis has led the development of a new and improved set of graduation competencies and associated milestones to guide the School of Medicine’s curriculum, pedagogy and student assessment. Developments in medical education under his leadership include increased active learning pedagogy in the curriculum, improved horizontal and vertical curriculum integration, a new four-tier student advising system, and the creation and growth of several specialized educational and workforce tracks for students including Rural Program In Medical Education (PRIME), San Joaquin Valley PRIME, Transforming Education and Community Health (TEACH) for urban underserved populations, and the Physician Scientist Training Program (PTSP). Other initiatives include multiple enhancements to student support services and student wellness, improved clinical skills teaching with the Master Clinical Educator program, and new content areas and required courses in the curriculum including professionalism, interprofessional education, quality improvement and patient safety, genetics, bioethics, and health informatics.
Servis coordinates the School of Medicine accreditation efforts, which included a historically successful LCME site visit and eight-year accreditation achieved in 2014 with four areas of strength, including the Office of Medical Education. Other educational achievements include high rates of student success in the NRMP or “Match;” improved student performance on USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 examinations and the California Consortium Clinical Performance Examination (CPX); and increased educational scholarship and extramural funding, including being one of eleven schools nationally to receive $1 million in funding from the AMA as part of their Accelerating Change in Medical Education program, and receiving a prestigious Stemmler assessment grant from the NBME for our Multiple Mini Interview(MMI) program in admissions.
A member of the faculty since 1989, Servis is a professor of clinical psychiatry, vice chair for education and the general psychiatry residency training director in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a nationally recognized leader in medical and psychiatric education. He has occupied the Roy Brophy Endowed Chair for more than 10 years, named for a former member and chair of the UC Board of Regents and dedicated to the teaching and education of medical students and residents. Peers have annually selected him as a nationally recognized best doctor since 2002.
As a nationally recognized expert in psychiatric education, Servis was appointed to two prominent working groups for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to develop competencies and milestones for general psychiatry and for psychosomatic medicine. The resulting competencies and milestones are used in program accreditation, but most important as national guides to content, pedagogy and assessment in graduate medical education in psychiatry. Servis served as both program chair and president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training (AADPRT), the largest professional organization for educators in psychiatry. Servis continues to provide leadership in the American Association of Directors of Psychiatry Residency Training (AADPRT), where he has helped to shape national policy on issues important to psychiatric education for the 190 residency programs in the United States. He chairs the Task Force on Combined Residency Training and is a member of the Recruitment Committee for AADPRT. Servis serves on the Residency Review Committee (RRC) for Psychiatry for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and is currently the vice chair for the RRC. Servis served for four years as chair of the Step 2 Test Material Development Committee for Psychiatry for the US Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) for the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) and currently serves on the USMLE Step 2 Interdisciplinary Review Committee.
Servis graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and completed his residency training at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center before joining UC Davis as the general psychiatry residency training director in 1989. He served as chair of the UC Davis School of Medicine Committee on Educational Policy from 2001-06 and won the C. John Tupper Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2009. He has won several national awards for his teaching and mentoring and has published more than 70 peer reviewed articles and book chapters on medical education and in the field of psychosomatic medicine. He has provided more than 30 faculty development workshops on medical education at UCLA, University of Washington, University of Minnesota, LSU, and other institutions throughout the United States.