Chair of Surgery at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU Joins The Prestigious ACS Academy Of Master Surgeon Educators®

FORT WORTH – Rohan Jeyarajah, M.D., FACS, Professor & Chair of Surgery at Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, has been selected as an inductee into the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Academy Of Master Surgeon Educators®.

Dr. Jeyarajah has been a professor and department chair at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU since 2018. He is a renowned member of Methodist Richardson Medical Center attending staff, where he serves as Director of Gastrointestinal (GI) Surgical Services and Director of the Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB)/Advanced GI Fellowship Program.

“It is really quite an honor for me,” Dr. Jeyarajah said. “Representing a smaller and new medical school like us in this prestigious organization is really such a step forward for all of us.”

The 2024 ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators® Induction Ceremony will be held in Chicago, Illinois, on Friday, September 27th.

The ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators® is a unique program of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) that launched in 2017. Its first cohort of Founding Members and Associate Members were inducted in 2018. In 2019, a new category of Affiliate Membership was added.

Three categories of membership, which are Member, Associate Member and Affiliate Member, are open to master surgeon educators across all surgical specialties each year during an application process. Being selected for induction into the Academy demonstrates the highest achievements in the domain of surgical education and is evaluated by a stringent peer review process.

Each year the Academy sets out to identify innovators and thought leaders in surgical education who put innovative teaching ideas into action.

The Burnett School of Medicine TCU’s new and innovative curriculum aims to transform medical education by training medical students as Empathetic Scholars®.

The medical school’s successful Match Day placements of its first two graduating classes into some of the top residency programs in the U.S. fit the mold of what the Academy sees as turning innovation into action, according to Dr. Jeyarajah.

“We are one of the few medical schools in the country that has a longitudinal integrated curriculum which I love,” Dr. Jeyarajah said. “I feel that we’ve created such wonderful physicians because the proof is in the pudding we’ve managed to match our students so well, especially into surgical specialties.”

Dr. Jeyarajah trained at the University of Chicago and participated in a liver transplant fellowship at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. Afterward, he spent eight years in academic medicine at UT Southwestern Medical School. He’s received funding for his pancreatic disease research and authored more than 150 book chapters and articles in his career.

He serves as the Secretary of The Americas Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (AHPBA) and chair of the Nominating Committee of the American College of Surgeons. He also serves as Chair of the Fellows Education Committee of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract.

Dr. Jeyarajah was also the accreditation chair, former President of the Fellowship Council and Governor of the American College of Surgeons. He served as the chair of the Program Director’s Committee of the AHPBA and was the former President of the North Texas Chapter of the ACS.

Dr. Jeyarajah hopes his acceptance into the Academy brings more notoriety to the Burnett School of Medicine’s forward-thinking approach to medical education.

“My job is to go out there and tell the world what a great job we’re doing over here,” Dr. Jeyarajah said. “To be recognized for this is really a recognition for the school not for me because they’ve allowed me to do this and do what I love.