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 Photo by Heather Hill The two IUB professors, Bruce Martin (right) and Dr. Mark Braun, share a badge of distinction: both are recipients of the American Medical Association Innovative Basic Science Faculty Member Award. |
By Joe Stuteville
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 was 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 professors at the Medical Sciences Program in Bloomington‹one of eight medical teaching sites statewide‹that offers the first two years of Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) curricula. The other centers are located in Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Muncie, South Bend and Terre Haute.
The two IUB professors, Bruce Martin and Dr. Mark Braun, share a badge of distinction‹both are recipients of the American Medical Association (AMA) Innovative Basic Science Faculty Member Award. Martin was the recipient of the prestigious honor in 1998; Braun was recognized this year.
It's not a random review-and-selection process that garners medical professors the AMA's teaching kudos. They are nominated by some of their toughest critics‹students‹who confidentially submit written justification to AMA judges detailing how a professor is innovative and why he or she is deserving of recognition.
Braun, a clinical professor of pathology, describes being both "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.
Martin, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics, expressed 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 practicing physicians."
Martin's students sharpen their learning skills by snoozing‹not in class, he stressed, but as part of take-home, sleep-latency tests. The exercise gives students 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," mused Braun, a medical doctor who three years ago earned a master's degree in anthropology at IUB. "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."
Braun's approach to teaching is a mixture of lectures, break-out 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.
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 native described Martin as "always willing to go the extra mile" to ensure that students understand their subject material. "He challenged us intellectually, and he encouraged us to perform at our highest levels," Windley added.
Windley, Drew Alden and Sean Munnelly nominated Braun for the 1999 AMA award.
Good teachers will almost, to a person, tell you they were influenced by good teachers. For Martin, it was a physics professor at Rice University. Braun's inspirational mentor continues to be Dr. Anthony Pizzo, whose involvement with Bloomington's medical education program spans nearly five decades. 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.
Read more about IU's eight medical education centers at:
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