The Southeastern Consortium for Dermatology

course, necessitated a name change for the organization, and thus was born the Southeastern Consortium for Dermatology. The first annual meeting of the new, larger SEC was held at the University of North Carolina in 1977. In 1987, the Charlotte Dermatology Association (all private practioners!) volunteered to host the SEC meeting when none of the academic institutions were able to host. In recent years, the SEC has extended its reach with the addition of the University of Alabama in 2000 and Eastern Virginia Medical Center in 2002. Today the SEC is composed of ten sponsoring departments. From the beginning, the SEC was designed to bring together dermatologists from academia and community practice from throughout the region. Originally, it was intended that meetings be held no more than one day’s drive from the homes of the members, though later expansion eventually put an end to that notion. Meetings were to be less formal than larger, national meetings. Both live-patient viewing and didactic lectures have been part of the program from the outset with the current format of Friday afternoon and Saturday morning for the didactic lectures and Sunday morning for the patient presentations. Speakers for the meetings were and are primarily drawn from the membership of the SEC, with few outside lecturers. The SEC Steering Committee, with representatives from each of the programs, provides continuity, historical perspective and oversight of the CME, the main meeting topics, and the finances of the organization. There have been 3 SEC Steering Committee chairman: David Woodley, MD of UNC who served from 1984 to 1987, Jack Lesher, MD of MCG who served from 1987 to 1991 and Elise Olsen, MD of Duke who has served from 1991 to the present. Since 1991, each of the host institutions has been responsible for the meeting management with the Steering Committee Chairman providing guidance to the hosting sites, financial oversight, retention of records and a forum for discussion of potential changes or problems. In 2002, the Steering Committee developed Administrative Regulations to help provide both a historical perspective and uniformity of meeting format practice for each hosting site. In 2004, the first additional half day site-based workshop was hosted at UAB and a half day path review course was initiated in 2007 by VCU/EVMS: these are held at the discretion of the hosting institution. In 2007, the SEC donated $5000 to the Dermatology Foundation to support research relating to medical Dermatology. In 2009, an SEC website was added to provide information on meetings for potential attendees and to house the historical and financial records of the group.