Taking a final bow
Residents Bowl emcee Gary Faerber, MD, looks back on more than a decade of fun and challenges.
Since it first debuted in 2012, the Residents Bowl has become a popular and beloved tradition every year at the AUA Annual Meeting as teams vie for the top spot and the bragging rights that come with it.
Residents Bowl emcee Gary
Faerber, MD
Q: You’ve been with the Residents Bowl since the beginning. How did that relationship begin?
I had been running the Residents Bowl in my home Section, the North Central Section, for several years. Dennis Pessis, MD, who was the incoming AUA president, was a fellow North Central Section board member during this time. He really was responsible for taking the Residents Bowl national, so to speak. He and Gopal Badlani, MD, FACS, FRCS, who was the AUA secretary, asked if I would be interested in creating the AUA Residents Bowl. Of course I was very flattered, honored and a bit intimidated.
Q: How has the Bowl evolved since it first started?
There have been some exciting changes over the years. One is that we invite foreign residents to join each Section team to offer a bit of international flavor to the event.
We have also instituted audience response during the semifinal games. A question is posed, and the audience can respond with an answer. The resident team can either agree with the audience or answer differently. This is always really entertaining.
During the championship, we track the number of residents from each representative Section who participated in a skills challenge at one of our sponsor exhibits. The Section with the most resident participants gets points added to their team’s score. Each team has a team name; based on voting, the team with the best name also gets points. Finally, we also added a “phone-a-chair,” our version of “phone-a-friend.” Teams in the championship game can reach out to a volunteer chair in urology to help them answer a question. Kurt McCammon, MD, FACS, FPMRS, professor of urology and Devine Chair in Genitourinary Reconstructive Surgery at Eastern Virginia Medical School, has been our chair for the last several years, and he is great!
Q: What has it meant to you to be part of the Residents Bowl over the years?
I have had a lot of people say I missed my true calling, that I should have quit urology to instead be a game show host. But running the Residents Bowl wouldn’t be possible without the judges at the event who help with scoring and adjudicating certain questions. And, of course, the AUA team that supports the Residents Bowl is fantastic.
Q: What made you decide to step down as emcee after all these years?
I don’t know if there was one thing that made me decide. I’ve been working with Brad Schwartz, DO, professor and the Frank and Linda Vala Endowed Chairman of Urology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, who’s been kind enough to help organize and guest emcee the last couple of years. Seeing his dedication and energy and commitment to the game, I felt the time was right.
Q: Do you have any words of wisdom or advice to pass along to the future emcee or future participants in the Bowl?
I’m not sure I have any, other than to say that I hope the AUA will be as supportive of the Residents Bowl as they have over all these years. I hope the residents find it fun, the audience finds it entertaining and the emcee takes it to yet another level of entertainment.
