Harold (Bo) Lovvorn III, MD. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
Harold (Bo) Lovvorn III, MD, Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, has been selected for the highly competitive American College of Surgeons (ACS) Academy of Master Surgeon Educators as an Associate Member. He was inducted into the Academy Sept. 10 during a celebration in Chicago.
Founded in 2017, the Academy has been charged with identifying and engaging innovators and thought leaders from the field of surgical education and translating innovation into action. The aim of the ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators is to recognize and assemble a cadre of renowned master surgeon educators who will work closely with the ACS Division of Education to advance the science and practice of avant-garde surgical education and training, according to the ACS website.
Candidates are admitted only after a peer-review process in which two members of the Academy’s Steering Committee independently review each applicant’s biosketch, curriculum vitae, and letters of recommendation, and present their evaluations to the full Steering Committee. A decision is reached by consensus against published standards and criteria. Lovvorn’s Associate Membership runs from October 2026 through October 2031.
“Bo has spent his career teaching pediatric surgeons how to think, not just how to operate,” said Jeffrey S. Upperman, MD, FACS, Surgeon-in-Chief at Monroe Carell and Chair of Pediatric Surgery. “The Academy recognizes the surgeons who shape the field through the people they train, and that is exactly the kind of contribution he has made here.”
Lovvorn, who joined Vanderbilt in 2002, has built a teaching record spanning fellowship training, departmental education leadership and international surgical capacity-building. Among his other roles, he is the Program Director for the Pediatric Surgery Fellowship and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Pediatric Surgery. He is also the institutional surgeon representative to the Children’s Oncology Group for Monroe Carell and leads a translational research program on the cellular origins of Wilms tumor, with more than 120 peer-reviewed publications.
“I am deeply honored that the ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators inducted me as an Associate Member,” Lovvorn said. “I am most grateful to the countless students, residents and fellows who both inspire and challenge me daily as a surgical educator. For me, teaching is reciprocal, and these learners have taught me far more than I have taught them.”
Lovvorn earned his bachelor’s degree from Duke University and his medical degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis. He completed general surgery residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, with a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Children’s Institute of Surgical Science at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, followed by pediatric surgery fellowship training at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
