2020 CAP Outstanding Educator Award

The CAP Outstanding Educator Award, established in 2018, recognizes outstanding performance and significant contributions in the advancement of professional development opportunities for pathologists and laboratory professionals. It is presented to an individual who has consistently demonstrated outstanding performance as faculty for a CAP education activity and/or has made outstanding contributions in the development of education activities for pathologists and/or laboratory professionals.

The College of American Pathologists presents Sarah Muntzing Bean, MD, FCAP, with the 2020 CAP Outstanding Educator Award. Dr. Bean is receiving this award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to improve the quality of CAP education offerings by serving as a leader, planner, faculty member, and subject matter expert.

Dr. Bean served as the CAP’s Curriculum Committee chair from 2016 to 2019, where her passion and expertise about education brought value during committee discussions. During her tenure, Dr. Bean led the committee and staff in developing and executing a three-year roadmap for achieving innovation and improvements of the CAP’s Annual Meeting education program, aligned with the Annual Meeting Strategy. Her notable accomplishments include:

• Providing direction and implementing data research insights in planning programs to meet attendees’ education needs and preferences.
• Introducing and championing the use of novel education formats, designs, and learning technologies in courses to increase engagement and learning impact of attendees (for example, Inspiration Stage, hot topics, full-day specialty courses, classroom assessment techniques, and role play).
• Increasing the total number of self-assessment modules (SAMs) with courses by 30%, including use of embedded mechanisms in live courses to meet the Continuing Certification needs of American Board of Pathology (ABPath) diplomates.
• Increasing the prestige and visibility of the annual meeting’s Special Lecture, which features well renowned pathologists sharing their lifetime perspective of the specialty’s evolution.
• Advocating for streamlined processes and approaches to improve planning and delivery efficiencies (for example, online proposal submission and review process and faculty tutorials on informatics and SAMs).

Dr. Bean worked to build strong relationships with experts across the CAP, ensuring the organization showcased the “best of the best” in evidence-based education presented to live and virtual audiences at the annual meeting. As a result of her leadership, the CAP was able to consistently achieve exceptionally high annual meeting attendee satisfaction ratings (>96%).

Dr. Bean served as annual meeting faculty from 2016 to 2018, teaching communication and feedback skills to attendees, and is currently slated as faculty for CAP21. Her ratings for the course were exceptionally positive (on average based on a 5-point scale): faculty effectiveness (4.84), intent to apply (4.69), and a high overall value (4.86).

Dr. Bean also served as a member of the Council on Education (COE) and Learning Portfolio Subcommittee from 2016 to 2019, providing guidance on the new learning concepts research initiative and the exploration of its top five concepts, which included the Pathology in the Park event. In 2017, Dr. Bean contributed to creating and obtaining COE approval of the CAP Outstanding Educator Award. From 2016 to 2019, she represented the COE on the Ad Hoc CAP Meritorious Service Award Review Committee.

Dr. Bean is a professor in the Department of Pathology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

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