Dr. Kolarik is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina Greenville where he has been Med-Peds Program Director since 2008. He received his medical degree from the Medical College of Ohio (now University of Toledo College of Medicine) where he graduated AOA in 1995. Dr. Kolarik then completed his Med-Peds residency at the University of Cincinnati in 1999. After residency, Dr. Kolarik undertook a General Internal Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and finished in 2001. He then served as Associate Program Director for Med-Peds at UPMC until he took over as the Med-Peds program director in 2004. While in Pittsburgh, he also created and led one of the only general academic Med-Peds fellowship programs in the nation. Dr. Kolarik was elected to the Med-Peds Program Director’s Association Executive Committee in 2012 and served as President from 2013-14. During his time as president, Dr. Kolarik created the website mppda.org to enhance communication among Med-Peds Program Directors nationwide and has served as an MPPDA representative to the Joint Council of Pediatric Hospital Medicine. Dr. Kolarik continues to serve on the MPPDA Executive Committee as Immediate Past President for 2014-15.

“The MPPDA has been an invaluable source of information and mentorship for me throughout my academic career. It has been a privilege to serve on the Executive Committee and to work with Med-Peds program directors from across the nation. This year as Past President, I look forward to working closely with the MPPDA Committee Chairs to continue to build and share resources from our committees with all of our members. I am also excited to find new ways to use our new website mppda.org to continue to bring our organization closer together, to share resources, and to make the everyday tasks of program direction simpler. I welcome all suggestions and feedback about how our site may continue to help our members. I am also excited to work with the MPPDA Research Committee this year in collaboration with the APDIM Survey and Scholarship Committee.  We are in the process of re-designing the way that the MPPDA Program Director Survey is administered and analyzed this year with the hope of increasing collaboration and scholarship within our organization.