LEWISBURG, W.Va. – A West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM) administrator has completed an internationally respected fellowship designed to support leaders at academic health centers, with a focus on advancing women in leadership positions.
Machelle Linsenmeyer, Ed.D., WVSOM’s assistant vice president for institutional effectiveness and academic resources, graduated from the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) fellowship in May. The program, based at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pa., helps faculty at schools of medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy develop the professional and personal skills required to be a leader in health care environments.
Linsenmeyer said she undertook the yearlong fellowship after being nominated by Linda Boyd, D.O., WVSOM’s chief academic officer.
“Dr. Boyd had gone through the ELAM program and thought it was excellent because it focused specifically on women,” she said. “Like most leaders, I wanted to improve my leadership skills, and I was drawn to the ELAM program because it was dedicated to the development of the professional and personal skills of women leaders.”
This year’s ELAM cohort began working in June 2024 and first met in person in September. Along with additional in-person and virtual meetings, participants completed online assignments, community-building activities and an action project intended to address an institutional or departmental need or priority.
Linsenmeyer’s project focused on creating a proposal for a “community of practice” for WVSOM faculty by bringing various academic departments together in a more centralized space and facilitating shared technology and development sessions. She presented her proposal at a gathering of ELAM graduates in May in Philadelphia.
She said the program, which included 98 fellows this year, gave her valuable knowledge she can use in her administrative role at WVSOM.
“I gained more than I expected. I learned skills related to negotiating, dealing with personnel issues and other topics any leader might struggle with. I acquired a lot of good tools that could be immediately implemented in my work at WVSOM,” she said.
The most useful aspect of the fellowship might be the connections it allowed her and other participants to make with one another and with past ELAM graduates, Linsenmeyer said. More than 1,600 ELAM alumni have leadership positions at institutions around the world.
“The networking will be hugely beneficial, because I can reach out not just to anyone in my cohort, but beyond it,” she said. “There were so many people you had something in common with or who were working on a project similar to yours. And because it’s a smaller group, it’s easier to reach out to them. For example, we’re working on building up AI at WVSOM, and I was able to talk to one of the vice deans for AI with an institution that’s at the forefront of it, and to learn what strategies might be useful for us.”
Linsenmeyer was the only member of ELAM’s 2024-25 cohort who is an administrator at an osteopathic medical school, and one of only a handful of osteopathic leaders in its 30-year history. She said she belongs to a special ELAM group because the 2024-25 cohort was the last to solely admit women. In spring 2025, the program began accepting qualified individuals regardless of gender.
Linsenmeyer joined WVSOM in 2014 as associate dean for assessment and educational development. In 2023, she was named the school’s assistant vice president of institutional effectiveness and academic resources, a role in which she oversees testing, assessment, surveying, curriculum mapping, competency tracking, academic technology, faculty development, program evaluation, educational research and WVSOM’s library.
