Faculty Medical Education Facilitators
As a future physician-innovator at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, your engineering-infused training will prepare you to be at the forefront of cutting edge medical innovation with the support of our Medical Education Facilitators. These world-class educators who will walk hand-in-hand with you during your time at Carle Illinois. As a life-long learner and problem solver, you will be ready to tackle current unknowns in health care head-on.
One facilitator will lead your eight-student cohort providing support as you work through medical cases during your problem-based learning Basic Science integrated with Clinical, Engineering, and Professionalism (BiCEP) sessions. Each facilitator brings a rich background of research, teaching, technology, or medicine. They are committed to training students to become self-learners in the classroom in order to graduate as innovative problem-solvers in medicine. Hear from our Medical Education Facilitators in the video below.
Meet the Medical Education Facilitators
Jo Ann Archey, M.D.
Dr. Jo Ann Archey currently serves as Interim Chief Diversity Officer at Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED), thread director for Social and Structural Determinants of Health, medical education facilitator, and faculty preceptor for first- and second-year medical students at Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Since joining the University of Illinois faculty in 2001, she has served as core faculty member for both the Foundations of Clinical Medicine I and II courses for first- and second-year medical students and a faculty preceptor for third-year medical students during their Family Medicine Core Clerkship. Dr. Archey is a staff physician in Family Medicine for the Christie Clinic Association in Rantoul, treating patients of all ages with a focus on adolescent medicine and women’s health. She received the Gold Foundation Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award in 2022, presented to faculty members who exemplify humanism in the care of patients. In addition to her medical doctorate, Dr. Archey earned her undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in diversity education, all from UIUC.
Samar Hegazy, M.D., Ph.D.
Samar Hegazy has several educational roles at CI MED as a medical education facilitator, Pathology Core Discipline Director, the co-director of the Lifespan Health Thread of the curriculum, the director of the elective pathology course “Literature Reviews in Pathology,” and the faculty advisor of the student pathology interest group. She is a fellow at the MEHP program at Johns Hopkins University. She has extensive experience teaching pathology and conducting clinical/translational cancer research in North America and internationally. Her scholarly work focused on identifying novel prognostic/therapeutic biomarkers for ALCL and prostate cancer. She continues to expand her research expertise to medical education in the areas of instructional strategies, curriculum development, and assessment to contribute to advancing medical school curricula, evidence-based medicine, and teaching. Currently, she is working on improving pathology education and medical curricula by developing open educational resources and tools for linking SDOH to the disease process and patient management.
Manuel E. Hernandez, Ph.D.
Manuel Hernandez is experienced in teaching in biomechanics, neuromechanics, motor control, motor learning, motor development, gerontology, and neurorehabilitation. He earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Neural Computation at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include the examination of neural mechanisms underlying mobility impairments in older adults with neurological conditions, including Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis, and the use of technology in monitoring changes in physical and mental health. He has been recognized for both teaching and mentoring excellence. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications, has presented in numerous conferences, and served as an invited speaker covering topics in aging, neuroscience, technology, and fall prevention. He serves as a faculty advisor to Latinx in Biomechanix and co-director of the Illini Fall Prevention Clinic.
Grace Lee Park, M.D.
Dr. Park is a board-certified family medicine physician who has been practicing college health at the University of Illinois for more than a decade. She earned her undergraduate and medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed her residency in Family Medicine at Carle Health/University of Illinois. Prior to joining Carle Illinois College of Medicine, Dr. Park was involved in medical education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and Peoria campuses for more than a decade in various roles. She has been recognized for her innovation in medical education, receiving the Innovation in Education Award from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign. She has a passion for the integration of basic and clinical sciences. She serves as a clinician editor at Aquifer Sciences and is a fellow in the Master of Education in the Health Professions at Johns Hopkins University.
Imanni Sheppard, Ph.D.
Dr. Sheppard is Co-Director of Medical Ethics and Humanities thread at the Carle Illinois, where she is also an assistant teaching professor and Medical Education Facilitator. Dr. Sheppard is also Director of Medical Education and Social Scientific Research at the Medical Humanities and Health Disparities Institute, working with community organizations to help build medical educational materials and develop health and wellness programming for sustainability. Dr. Sheppard’s scholarly works include authorship of: Health, Healing, and Hurricane Katrina: A Critical Analysis of Psychosomatic Illness in Survivors; “Embodied Trauma and the Dissociation of the Self” in Dark Denials and Domestic Violence; presentation of her work entitled “Medical Inequity and Health Disparities as Thanatopolitics: The Socio-medical Impact of Intergenerational Racialization” at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France; and a forthcoming book entitled The Parallax of Medical “Progress,” due out September of 2022.
Lisan Smith, Ph.D.
Dr. Lisan Smith completed her PhD in pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, followed by postdoctoral training in Developmental Neurobiology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she was an awarded a UNCF Merck Postdoctoral Fellowship. She brings experience as a bench scientist in academia and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as several years on the business side of science in small to medium size companies. Prior to joining Carle Illinois, Dr. Smith was a technology manager in the Office of Technology Management at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she managed the Life Sciences and Healthcare Intellectual Property portfolios of several University Inventors through patent protection and commercialization efforts. In addition, Dr. Smith has worked as a research and scientific liaison in global health, biotechnology job trainer, and biology professor and mentor in the academic and not-for-profit sectors. She is excited to contribute to the success of Carle Illinois’ future physician innovators.
J.P. Swigart, Ph.D.
J. P. Swigart earned his Ph.D. in education, policy, organization and leadership with a concentration in higher education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying student interactions in college-level STEM courses. His research continues exploring student engagement in active learning settings within the medical curriculum. He joined Carle Illinois College of Medicine in the spring of 2020 as an instructor of gross anatomy and maintains the cadaver labs in addition to his facilitation duties. Prior to joining Carle Illinois, he taught pre-professional level human anatomy and physiology courses to students across the pre-health field. He earned his bachelor’s in environmental biology from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s in marine biology from the University of South Florida.
Jaya Yodh, Ph.D.
Jaya Yodh joined Carle Illinois in 2017 as an inaugural faculty member and serves in multiple educational roles as a Medical Education Facilitator, co-director for Phase 1 Synthesis and Summary and Foundations: Molecules to Populations courses, Biochemistry Core Discipline Lead, and Life-Span Health Thread Co-Lead. She was the recipient of the 2022 International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) Early Career Award for Teaching Excellence and Innovation and the Association of Biochemistry Educators 2019 Scholar Award. Her scholarship focuses on integration of basic, clinical, and engineering sciences, PBL-based innovations, holistic board exam preparation, and clinical-biochemistry thread mapping. Prior to joining Carle Illinois, Dr. Yodh held faculty positions in biochemistry at Midwestern University and Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, and in biological physics at University of Illinois’ physics department. Read more about Dr. Yodh here.