Faculty, Staff and Deans - UVA Medicine Inova Campus

Craig Cheifetz, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Medical Education at Inova’s UVA School of Medicine Regional Campus with more than 15 years of experience as a regional campus dean. Dr. Cheifetz is a nationally recognized thought leader on regional medical campus education and an AAMC Group on Regional Medical Campus’s Distinguished Service Award recipient. Dr. Cheifetz is a former national chairman of the AAMC GRMC and the lead author on the 2014 Academic Medicine publication which helped to define regional medical campus types through a new categorization system. He graduated medical school from the State University of New York at Buffalo both AOA and Summa Cum Laude and completed his residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Cheifetz has completed both the Stanford Faculty Development Facilitator’s Program in Clinical Teaching and the Harvard-Macy Program for Leaders in Medical Education. Dr. Cheifetz has trained over five hundred academic and community physicians in how to become better clinical educators. He has lectured at the national, regional, and local levels in the area of clinical education. Dr. Cheifetz was the 2020 award recipient for the American College of Physicians’ Virginia Chapter Laureate Award which is presented based on a physician’s distinguished career accomplishments. He has been the recipient of two Golden Apple Teaching Awards from Georgetown for his past contributions to medical student and residency education. In 2005, he was named as the Young Internist of the Year for the state of Virginia by the American College of Physicians and in 2012 received the Walter J. MacDonald Award for the top young internal medicine physician in the United States. Dr. Cheifetz was the 2011 recipient of the Enrique Gerszten Faculty Teaching Excellence Award from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, which is their highest honor for a clinical educator to receive.

Dr. Cheifetz is a model physician and executive leader who is passionate about providing outstanding and progressive clinical care, education, and innovation to his patients, learners and his community.

Alicia Freedy, MD, FAAP, is the Assistant Dean for Curriculum at the UVA School of Medicine, Inova Campus. Dr. Freedy previously served as the Assistant Dean for Curriculum for the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine Inova Campus since 2012. She is a graduate of Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, completed her Pediatric training at Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children, and continues to practice as a Pediatric Hospitalist. Dr. Freedy’s interests are in curriculum development, clinical reasoning, mentorship, and educating future clinicians on the many facets of the Patient-Centered Medical Home. The Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care (IPFCC) has recognized her for her partnership with families to co-develop medical school curriculum. Also, she has held several leadership positions within the Council of Medical Student Educators in Pediatrics. Dr. Freedy lives in Fairfax with two daughters, and her dog.

Gregory Trimble, MD, is currently the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the UVA School of Medicine, Inova Campus. He is also the Vice-Chair of the Department of Medicine and an Internal Medicine hospitalist at the Inova Fairfax Medical Campus. Dr. Trimble is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia and completed his residency at the University of Utah in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics in 2007. He also completed a Chief Resident year in Internal Medicine in 2008. One of his interests is faculty development in clinical education and he completed the Stanford Faculty Development Facilitator’s Program in Clinical Teaching in 2012. He served as Clerkship Director for Internal Medicine from 2011 to 2015 and has won numerous institutional awards for teaching excellence. He was the Assistant Dean for Faculty at the VCU School of Medicine Inova campus from 2015 to 2019. Additionally, he was the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the VCU School of Medicine Inova campus from 2019-2021.

Natalie Guerrier McKnight, MD, is the Assistant Dean for Faculty for the UVA School of Medicine, Inova Campus. Prior to this appointment, she served for five years as the Pediatric Clerkship Director. Dr. McKnight was a graduate of the initial cohort of Advancing Pediatric Educator Excellence (APEX), a national pediatric clinical teaching program. She has a passion for faculty development, and has presented nationally on topics including assessment and working with unmotivated learners. Dr. McKnight obtained her undergraduate degree in sociology at Harvard University, her MD at Yale School of Medicine, completed pediatric residency in the Pediatric Leadership for the UnderServed (PLUS) program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and is a board-certified Pediatric Hospitalist.