Association of Midwifery Educators

The mission of the Association of Midwifery Educators (AME) is to strengthen schools and support teachers and school administrators through connection, collaboration and coordination.

www.associationofmidwiferyeducators.org

The History of the Association of Midwifery Educators

The Association of Midwifery Educators has grown out of the work of the Outreach to Educators Project (OTEP) in response to a perceived need for current midwifery educators to network with each other.

The Outreach to Educators Project was initiated by the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council Board of Directors in 2005. The project was initiated in response to a perceived need for support and consultation in school development, educational resources, administrative sophistication, and curriculum development and general advice by new and developing schools. MEAC did not feel it should or could fulfill that role and sought to find a way to serve this need that schools had.

The MEAC Board applied for and received a $30,000 two-year grant from the Daniels Foundation and hired a coordinator for the project in May, 2005. In creating the Outreach to Educators Project (OTEP), MEAC hoped to launch an organization which might bring midwifery educators of all kinds together to improve direct-entry midwifery education, to create a forum for discussion of issues relevant to midwifery educators, to build a supportive network for existing schools, and to guide schools toward accreditation if they so desire.

The coordinator of OTEP started her work by coalating a list of all the accredited and non-accredited schools currently operating in the U.S. and contacting each one by phone to assess their level of interest in such a networking organization and to get input on possible activities or projects we could work on together. The following list includes the most frequent suggestions:

Publish a newsletter for midwifery educators

Plan joint recruitment activities

Produce an accreditation guidebook

Have a regular educators tract at the annual MANA conference

Create a handbook for educators

Create an on line discussion group for educators

OTEP had its first meeting in Boulder during the 2005 MANA conference where more ideas on what the organization could do were generated. Regular communication has started to happen between the schools as the OTEP coordinator has begun to build the network throughout the U.S.

The OTEP newsletter, “Giving Birth to Midwives”, has begun publication and is being distributed to all schools and other leaders in the midwifery community.

In order to carry the OTEP work into the future, the Association of Midwifery Educators (AME) was formed.

Click here to visit the AME website.