Rick McGee, PhD
Associate Dean for Professional Development & Professor of Medical Education
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Rick McGee, PhD, is the Associate Dean for Professional Development and Professor of Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. During his career, he has been in faculty and leadership positions at 4 medical schools and the intramural program at NIH. The first 20 years of his career focused on cellular neurobiology research, teaching, and the development of young scientists and clinicians. The subsequent 20 years have focused on leadership of research training, and developing new methods for assisting the professional development of young scientists, particularly individuals from underrepresented minority groups and women. In his current position, he leads research professional development for young faculty through a variety of individual and group coaching activities. As part of this effort, he has created a novel group coaching model for grant writing that extends over 2-3 months. Dr. McGee also directs the NIH-funded Collaborative Learning and Integrated Mentoring in the Biosciences (CLIMB) program. CLIMB is a professional development program for biomedical PhD students during the first 3 years of their training. He also leads the Scientific Careers Research and Development Group, a team of more than 10 social science and education researchers studying the career decision-making processes of PhD students and young scientists through both empirical and applied research. The National Longitudinal Study of Young Life Scientists is following the development and career decisions of a very diverse group of more than 200 biomedical PhD students with annual in-depth interviews from the start of the PhD and into their careers. Data analysis is drawing on multiple social science theories and models with particular attention to differences associated with gender, class, race and ethnicity. Based on these theories, he and his colleagues developed a novel coaching-based model to enhance the success of young scientists which is being tested in a randomized controlled trial –The Academy for Future Science Faculty. Most recently, he is helping to deploy new mentor training and coaching approaches through the NIH-funded National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) with particular attention to individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.