Bob received his MD degree from Yale in 1987, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins in 1999. He completed a Pediatrics residency at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and a fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. From 1993-2002 Bob was at the University of Maryland as a Pediatric Intensivist, where he held leadership roles in the Pediatric residency program and undergraduate medical education. In 2002, Bob relocated to Hartford, Connecticut to be Medical Director of Inpatient Services and to start an academic division of hospital medicine at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. From 2005-2011, he assumed the role of Vice President for Quality and Patient Safety. During his years in Connecticut, Bob also served as Associate Director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program overseeing competency-based education, served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors, and was a member of the Pediatrics Milestones Working Group.
In 2011, Bob moved to the AAMC, where his efforts were aimed at advancing competency-based medical education. He served as the project lead for Education in Pediatrics Across the Continuum, a model that proved feasibility of advancing students from medical school through residency based on competence rather than time. Bob also served as the AAMC’s project lead and one of the drafting panel members for the Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency. During that time, Bob also served as one of the core developers of Entrustable Professional Activities for General Pediatrics.
In 2016, Bob moved to Minneapolis to become the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education. He led UME through a five-year strategic plan focused on a vision of “A community learning together to prepare exceptional physicians to improve the health and wellbeing of Minnesota and beyond.” The strategic plan had broad engagement and transformed the core processes of curriculum, student support services, assessment, and program evaluation towards a competency-based framework designed to improve the learning environment and guarantee the abilities of the graduating students and their readiness for residency.
In 2022, Bob left the University of Minnesota to move to Chicago and became a Visiting Clinical Professor in the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he leads strategic planning efforts for the Department. Bob also serves as a lead faculty for the Leading Organizations to Health leadership development program of the AAMC.
