Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1545861
Medical Center but soon chose to go into rural practice, because "you learn so much, not just about medicine, but how to run a practice." Educating future doctors, rural and otherwise, eventually pulled him to Salina and then Wichita. When asked about noteworthy accomplishments over his career, he mentions the accomplishments of others. "Without question, I'm most proud of the medical students and the residents we trained. We have an outstanding department, one known nationally more than we are locally or at the state level. Upon graduation, about a third of our residents stay here in Wichita and about a third of them go to very small towns in Kansas," he says. "If you look at a state map, a huge number of counties have graduates that trained in Wichita." It's a department, he says, that sees itself as about 410 miles long and 210 miles wide — the breadth of Kansas — and delivers training in classrooms and clinics large and small across the state. "I'm proud of our staff members, full-time faculty and volunteer faculty here in Wichita and throughout the state," he says, noting that over a dozen volunteer preceptors have won national teaching awards. "No department anywhere comes close to that." Having concluded a yearlong phased retirement at the end of June 2025, Kellerman has been traveling, editing a textbook and managing reviews of medical books. He says the department is in good hands with Gretchen Irwin, M.D., whom he first met as a University of Pittsburgh medical student and has been prepared by her roles as a residency director and associate dean of graduate medical education. "I've given her a lot of advice and to her credit she's taken very little of it," Kellerman says with a grin. As family medicine clerkship director, Gretchen Irwin, M.D., MBA, became immersed in how to educate medical students. As residency director, she deepened her knowledge of how future doctors learn and what they need to succeed. Her next role — associate dean for graduate medical education — broadened her perspective, allowing her to see how specialties such as surgery and obstetrics and gynecology approached learning. As chair of the Department of Family & Community Medicine since July 2024 and having handed off the associate dean's duties to Turi McNamee, M.D., last July, Irwin is now getting to focus on the specialty she loves. Easing the transition was the "incredible grace" of Rick Kellerman, M.D., a mentor who helped her "build the skill set to take on each role." The chair's role, which includes responsibility for 99 residents in three programs, brings a wide range of challenges. There's the move to the downtown campus and larger first- and second-year medical school classes. There's incorporating technologies like point-of-care ultrasound, preparing students for AI and ever-changing medical systems, and instilling even more deeply the necessity of lifelong learning. The role also brings opportunities to continue researching and supervising residents. As she observes, "family doctors inherently like variety, or we probably wouldn't have chosen the specialty. We like having different things every day, and that's what I get to do." Irwin didn't go to medical school to become a family medicine doctor (pathology, she thought) nor a medical educator. But the more she learned about the "how" of sharing knowledge and skills, she was sold. "It's always fun to watch people figure things out, and sometimes they surprise you and see it before you do," she says. And through class after class of students, "over and over again you get to see this moment of where things click. That's incredibly fulfilling." DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SURGERY To Alex Ammar, M.D., the retired chair of the KUSM-Wichita Department of General Surgery, it's always been "interesting and exciting" to have residents and medical students along in his practice. And not just because they want to learn but "because I learn things, too." Ammar, who officially retired on Dec. 31, 2024, had led the department since 1998 and was just the second chair, having succeeded his uncle George Farha, M.D., its founder. In March 2025, one of the many physicians Ammar helped train, Brett Grizzell, M.D., took leadership of the department. The new and past chairs are colleagues at Wichita Surgical Specialists, where Ammar remains president and CEO. He calculates that over 70% — 25 of 34 — of his practice's current Gretchen Irwin, M.D., MBA Alex Ammar, M.D. 11