Lessons for a Lifetime
Two AMA award-winning professors provide their Bloomington students with a road map to
learn medicine and the role of the physician.

Helen Keller had her Annie Sullivan, who opened the young girl's mind to new worlds beyond the shadowy barriers of darkness and silence. Plato drank from the cup of knowledge offered by Socrates and began a lifelong philosophical and political odyssey. Quarterback Bart Starr's stellar performance on and off the gridiron were in large part forged by the gritty genius of Coach Vince Lombardi.

Teachers often exert an influence that transcends classroom lectures and laboratories, and such is the case with two national stars in the Bloomington Medical Sciences Program. Bruce Martin, PhD, and Mark W. Braun, MD '75, share a badge of distinction; both are recipients of the American Medical Association Innovative Basic Science Faculty Member Awards. Dr. Martin was the recipient ofthe prestigious honor in 1998. Dr. Braun was recognized in June, 1999.

"Having back-to-back AMA teaching awards clearly demonstrates the IU School of Medicine has some truly gifted teachers, and this is particularly true in Bloomington," says Assistant Dean Talmage R. Bosin, PhD, director of the Bloomington Medical Sciences Program and professor of pharmacology and toxicology. Dr. Bosin oversees a program, one of eight sites statewide, that offers the first two years of IUSM curricula to an average of fifty-six students each year.

Dr. Bosin says the smaller class sizes at Bloomington allow all faculty members to experiment with teaching techniques. "We have a multifaceted approach to teach medical students, ranging from computer-based instruction to case-based learning. This educational diversity helps bring vitality to the classroom," he says.

Measuring Innovation
The AMA's measure of that vitality is not a random review-and-selection process. Instead, instructors are proposed by some of their toughest critics - students - who confidentially submit written nominations to AMA judges detailing how a professor is innovative and why she or he deserves recognition.

Dr. Braun, clinical professor of pathology, describes feeling "honored and humbled" when he learned of his award. For more than two decades he has helped prepare Bloomington's second-year students for their final two years of medical school at Indianapolis.

Dr. Martin, associate professor of physiology and biophysics, expresses a similar modesty. "You don't enter teaching with the idea of competing for or seeking awards. I think you do it for the reward of knowing you've reached a student and have taught him or her critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are essential for prac-ticing physicians."

Dr. Martin's students sharpen their learning skills by snoozing - not in class, but as part of take-home sleep-latency tests. The exercise gives them a realistic gauge to determine if they are well-rested or too tired when they arrive for class.

"I'm not quite sure what is innovative and what is not about my approach to teaching," says Dr. Braun, who three years ago earned an MA in anthropology at IU-Bloomington. "I do know that virtually all students enter medical school with anxiety about the coursework and the profession. They see the size of the textbooks, the volume of information they must be able to absorb, and they're often overwhelmed. I try to help put them at ease."

Dr. Braun's approach to teaching is a mixture of lectures, breakout discussion sessions, and an occasional joke or dose of the works of the late Robert Service, a Jack Londonesque poet. He also created a compact disk and Web site as tools for this generation of computer-savvy students.

What Works Today
Both Drs. Braun and Martin have been teaching long enough to know what works in today's classroom and what doesn't. Observes Dr. Martin, "Traditionally, the roles have been fixed. The teacher lectures; the student listens and takes notes. Today's students expect to be engaged and ask questions; they expect the information you are giving them to be relevant to their studies and the physician's role."

Steve Windley claims both professors prepared him well for the rigors of his third year of medical school, which he began last fall. The Seymour, Ind., native - who earned his undergraduate degrees in psychology and chemical engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.- describes Dr. Martin as "always willing to go the extra mile" to ensure students understand their subject material. "He challenged us intellectually and he encouraged us to perform at our highest levels," adds Mr. Windley.

Mr. Windley, Drew Alden and Sean Munnelly, all third-year students at the Indianapolis campus, nominated Dr. Braun for the 1999 AMA award. In their comments, they wrote, "His guidance is essential for our clinical preparation and his focus aids us in our own struggles of the second year. He is a doctor and a scholar, with a brilliant mind and sensitive heart in one package."

Good teachers will almost to a person tell you they were influenced by good teachers. For Dr. Martin, it was a physics professor at Rice University in Texas. Dr. Braun's inspirational mentor continues to be Anthony Pizzo, MD, whose involvement with Bloomington's medical education program spans nearly five decades. Dr. Pizzo, who turned over the directorship of the Pathology Department to his former student in 1994, today does what many excellent professors do when they enter their retirement years; he teaches. That's the kind of dedication Mark Braun and Bruce Martin deliver to their students.