Look! Up in the Department of Family and Community Medicine! It's a professor! It's a mentor! It's KMan!  

Dr. Rick Kellerman, department chair and supporter of all things having to do with family medicine at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita, recently received the school's award for Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Junior Faculty, known as "The Jayhawk."  

Although Kellerman joked that the commendation sounds "like an award they give you right before the eulogy," colleagues say the recognition is well-deserved. "I'm really embarrassed about this whole thing, because the faculty mentor me," he said of the honor.  

"Rick is good at finding what people are good at and putting them where they can shine. He knows what people are good at even before they know it themselves," said Dr. Gretchen Dickson. Dickson herself was hired by Kellerman to head the family medicine residency program at Wesley Medical Center.  

Dr. Kari Clouse, an assistant professor in the department, recalled Kellerman's comment after he brought her to the Wichita campus: "'Just wait, you are going to LOVE this job.' Those were words spoken by a man who knows about loving his job."  

Rural Kansas roots  

Kellerman grew up in western Kansas in a family of educators. His mother was a grade school teacher and his father was registrar and director of admissions at Fort Hays State University. As for his early interest in medicine he said, "We lived in smaller towns in Kansas, so it became pretty obvious that there was a need for physicians. I was interested in what they did."  

Kellerman earned a chemistry degree at Fort Hays State and his medical degree from KU School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Wesley, and followed it with a one-year fellowship in clinical teaching in Texas.  

He returned to his Plainville, Kansas, roots to establish his practice. Rooks County was then the most medically underserved county in the state. Right away he began to mentor other physicians and served as a volunteer faculty member for the Wichita campus.  

"A couple of my students have gone on to do great things in academic medicine," he said. Namely, Dael Waxman, interim chair of the family medicine department at Carolinas HealthCare System, and Don Nease, associate clinical professor of family medicine at University of Colorado Denver.  

Kellerman became head of the family medicine residency program at Smoky Hill in Salina in 1988. He helped stabilize it, recruited residents and modified the curriculum. "You could see the potential of the program," he said.  "I left it better than I found it, and following me, Chuck Allred and Rob Freelove have done a great job."

Transition to the Wichita campus   

But Kellerman didn't really leave it. When he became department chair in 1996, he assumed oversight of Smoky Hill and the Wichita campus' two other family medicine residencies, at Via Christi Regional Medical Center and Wesley. Currently those programs include 48 faculty and 93 residents.  

Kellerman still teaches - he leads a small group for first- and second-year students - but his biggest responsibility is putting other people in the right place, with the right resources, to accomplish the department's many responsibilities and goals.  

He helps faculty find the best way to stimulate students and residents through small group teaching, observation, feedback and assessments. For some, it comes naturally. Others require more mentoring and training. "Part of it is just encouragement," Kellerman said. "Sometimes it's correction. Mostly it's just feedback on their ideas."  

"There's more to being a good teaching physician than just being a good doctor. You have to know the medical information and you have to have the teaching skills. You have to be able to challenge students and residents to think for themselves. Giving the answers is not teaching or leading."  

Kellerman said his job is made easier because "we only hire good people. We have very talented faculty. They understand that they're training young physicians, many of whom are going to practice in these rural, underserved areas, and they have a mission to see their that residents who are going into practice are well prepared."  

Dr. Scott Moser, a professor and the school's vice chair of education, said Kellerman turns his annual reviews - often unproductive in many jobs - into valuable mentoring opportunities. "We spend less time reviewing my past progress and more time planning my next steps," Moser said. Kellerman also seeks out feedback on his own performance as a supervisor, something Moser said he's tried to incorporate into his own mentoring efforts.  

Mentoring "just comes naturally"  

Dickson and others cite Kellerman's interest in their careers and professional development. Dickson first got to know him as the medical student representative on an American Association of Family Physicians board of directors. They kept in touch as she went through residency and then into practice in her native Pennsylvania.  

"He was great at answering questions if I was struggling with something or wondering about my future career," she said.  

Kellerman eventually recruited her to direct the school's family medicine clerkship, and then appointed her to the Wesley residency director job in 2013. "He thinks about the careers of the people he mentors more than he does his own," Dickson said. "That just comes naturally to him."  

Kellerman also oversees the twice-yearly continuing medical education conferences for physicians, each of which draws about 200 doctors to Wichita. Not surprisingly, given all these activities and his years at the school, there aren't too many family physicians in Kansas who Kellerman doesn't know.  

It's been a big year for awards for Kellerman, who in May was named physician of the year by the Kansas Academy of Family Physicians.  

Outside work, Kellerman is a big fan of college basketball, reading and movies. He and his wife, Janet, have three grown children. Now 61, he's not planning to retire just yet.  

"People may want me to," he said with a laugh, "but not yet."