In his life – both personally and professionally – Dr. Charles Zeller says the words his father passed down to him as a child have guided him to success and contentment.
“He said if you agree to take on a job or a project, make sure you’re prepared to finish it and do it with passion and intensity,” said Dr. Zeller, the medical school’s assistant dean for Continuing Education. “That has helped guide me over these last several years, guided me more than anything else.”
Dr. Zeller’s recent remarks came as he prepares to close the book on a career in medicine and continuing medical education that has spanned more than 40 years. His retirement will be official on Monday, October 10, 2018.
Dr. Zeller, 72, has led efforts around continuing medical education at WMed and its predecessors, Southwest Michigan Area Health Education Center (SMAHEC) and Michigan State University Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies, since 1976. In that time, he said he has been able to witness, firsthand, the growth of continuing education for medical professionals, and the medical school’s growing commitment to ensuring that medical teams “stay sharp and on the point” with medical treatment and case management issues.
Dr. Zeller, a native of New Albany, Indiana, came to Kalamazoo in 1971 after earning his MD degree from Indiana University. He completed his post-graduate training in Emergency Medicine at Bronson Methodist Hospital. In addition to his leadership in continuing education, Dr. Zeller is an associate professor in the medical school’s Department of Emergency Medicine and an associate clinical professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.
During his career, Dr. Zeller has held many leadership positions, including serving on the Board of Directors of numerous organizations, including West Michigan AirCare, Kalamazoo County Medical Control Authority, and Bronson Healthcare Group, Inc., among others.
Dr. Zeller said he’s proud of what WMed and its predecessors have accomplished during his time at the medical school. He said the institution has one of the longest running continuing education programs in the country with uninterrupted accreditation since 1976, first by the Michigan State Medical Society Committee on CME Accreditation, then in 2014 by the ACCME.
And more recently, at the end of July, the medical school’s Office of Continuing Education was granted Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE) by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Accreditation Program (ANCC). The accreditation is for a four-year period through July 2022.
The accreditation milestone means that WMed is now a provider of continuing education for the healthcare team, including physicians, pharmacists, nurses, physician assistants and optometrists using a unified accreditation process and set of standards.
“This is an important and pivotal step for the medical school in ensuring that we are enabling effective collaboration to improve health outcomes,” Dr. Zeller said. “This milestone confirms that the work by our Office of Continuing Education at WMed meets the rigorous standards set forth for educational quality and independence.”
The Office of CE has been preparing for joint accreditation over the past several years. In February, medical school leaders submitted a comprehensive application and then hosted a survey in April. Staff in the CE Office are now preparing for the new joint accreditation with updates to the online CE application that will be available in the near future. Additionally, in early July, the Office of CE relocated to the third floor of the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus in downtown Kalamazoo.
As he prepares for retirement, Dr. Zeller said his departure from WMed is “bittersweet.”
“I’m just as excited now as I was back in 1976 about the prospects for continuing education in this community,” he said. “It allows us to stay sharp and on point about medical treatment and case management issues. With continuing education, I think we’ve stayed connected with what’s happening in medicine and moving from physician education to a team approach in medicine.
“It is a little bittersweet but at some point and time you have to hang up your spikes and pass the baton to somebody else.”