Steven H. Stumpf, EdD

I am a researcher by training and an anthropologist at heart. I am an educator by discipline with interests and background in six principal areas: program evaluation, telemedicine, health professions training, grantsmanship, clinical psychotherapy, and integrative medicine. Innovative and vanguard initiatives are my preferred work environment. I have been involved with movements to empower marriage counselors to bill for their services alongside psychologists; position a loosely affiliated certificated allied health profession squarely within the medical school with one of the first master degree curricula in the field; create testbeds for telemedicine projects in community clinics serving indigent populations; deliver online education to physicians seeking continuing education; create software to detect and document diabetic retinopathy over the web; and create bilateral integrative education models so that physicians and CAM providers might discover each other’s traditions and medical skills.

Publishing at least one article annually is a personal goal. Examples of my writing along with salient articles by other authors are linked under the I.M.H.O. headings, column left. My CV includes a complete list of consulting clients, publications and successful grant awards. My resume focuses on executive/administrative accomplishments.

Telemedicine is practically obsolete as a useful term. The implementation of web-based technologies with medical services is well-established. It is, after all, medicine in the modern age. The real issue is paying for the change-over. I have attached the executive summary from a seminal telemedicine project funded by the National Library of Medicine and completed in 2000.

After a 20 year career listening to others talk about their lives I can share the following lessons learned: a little goes a long way, practice makes perfect, and no learning without mistakes.

60% of successful grantwriting is following directions. Federal grants are the most complicated, with requirements successively diminishing in terms of intricate detail, from state to county to city to private foundations. The most important aspect in successful development at every level is the strength of the relationship with the funding agency or donor. The chances of getting funded again increases if a worthwhile report is published. Here is a report from a community-based telemedicine project that was funded at various stages over multiple years by different groups.

Integrative medicine must be bilateral in spirit and practice. Without having completed the standard course of training a physician is no more qualified to teach Traditional Chinese Medicine than an acupuncturist is qualified to teach biomedical science. The best current example of integrative medicine is a medical practice that employs qualified practitioners from each discipline to collaboratively triage the patient and integrate treatment in accordance with discipline-appropriate diagnoses.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are hardly the sine qua non of educational research. By contrast, medicine regards RCTs as the highest form of scientific research. Most medical research actually falls into the realm of social science research where RCTs are considered insufficient, inappropriate and ineffective for demonstrating effectiveness. Evaluation models are more appropriate in most cases than RCT and even other alternative (e.g., ethnographic, quasi-experimental) research models.

Students entering college today and tomorrow expect a seamless transition to college life. Students expect to conduct their campus lives with the same communication forms to which they are accustomed – blogging, wikis, myspace, youtube. Campuses not on board with Web 2.0 will be regarded by students as less interesting choices. Take a look at Mimi Ito's website to learn how tweeners are growing up without giving these modes of communication and productivity a second thought.