T Minus 10

Crew Member

Dr. Kent Hecker

PhD, MSc, BSc

Associate Professor
Veterinary Medical Education
Joint Appointment Community Health Sciences
Cumming School of Medicine

Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.thenal.ca/

Kent Hecker is an Associate Professor of Health Professions Education in Veterinary Medicine with a joint appointment in Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

Dr Hecker studies performance in health professions education. Specifically, Dr. Hecker has built a program of basic and applied research focusing in three areas:  1) selection of applicants; 2) assessment of student/trainee competency development across the health care continuum; and 3) the application of neuro-imaging methods (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] and electroencephalography [EEG]) to assess learning, reasoning and decision making.  Hecker has published some of the first fMRI work assessing brain differences in novice and expert clinicians during clinical reasoning as well as EEG work assessing learning within a health professions education context. In 2017 he received a $365,000 (CAD) Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant to build The Health Education Neuroassesment Laboratory (THENaL) which is the first research facility in Canada for understanding how brain data relates to learning, education and behavioral test performance within health professions education.

Dr. Hecker has participated on projects with external funds of more than $2.6 million (CAD) and internal funds of more than $200,000 (CAD). He has > 65 peer reviewed manuscripts, >95 conference abstracts, and >30 invited presentations at national and international meetings. He is an Associate editor for the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, Advances in Health Sciences Education, and Canadian Medical Education Journal.

Dr. Hecker teaches graduate courses in both the Veterinary Medicine and the Medical Education graduate programs in research design and statistics, biostatistics, educational measurement and assessment, and instructional methods.