Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society, has elected Dr. Charles “Chipper” H. Griffith III, senior associate dean for medical education at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, as a councilor director on the Society’s board. Griffith’s three-year term begins at the AOA board of directors meeting in Portland, Maine, on Oct. 3.

Alpha Omega Alpha is a professional medical organization that recognizes and advocates for excellence in scholarship and the highest ideals in the profession of medicine. Alpha Omega Alpha is to medicine what Phi Beta Kappa is to letters and the humanities and Sigma Xi is to science.

Griffith earned his medical degree at Vanderbilt University and completed his residencyin internal medicine/pediatrics at UK HealthCare.  He also earned a Master of Science degree in Public Health from UK.  Prior to his current role, Griffith has served as associate dean for student affairs at the UK College of Medicine. He is an educational scholar of national repute having published multiple articles and received numerous awards for his teaching including the AOA/AAMC Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award in 2004, the most highly regarded medical school teaching award in the country.

In 2006, the Clerkship Directors of Internal Medicine (CDIM), a national organization that promotes excellence in education of medical students in internal medicine, honored Griffith by renaming their educational research award “the Charles H. Griffith Educational Research Award.” He also was profiled in “Leadership Careers in Medical Education,” the American College of Physician’s Teaching Medicine six-book series published in 2010.