Changing course

The Center for Teaching Excellence’s Innovative Pedagogy Grant supports innovative teaching methods across different disciplines. The goal is to invest in the improvement of courses taught by faculty members who provide students with exemplary, highly engaging learning experiences, offered in an online, blended or traditional format. 

One recipient of the CTE grant is Alison Huppmann, associate professor of biomedical sciences at the School of Medicine Greenville, who is using the one-time funding to restructure a course within the first-year curriculum.

The new approach will expand on the existing pulmonary organ system module by incorporating instruction on relevant diseases and their treatments. By folding in material that is usually reserved for the second year of medical school, the SOM Greenville aims to provide a more comprehensive curriculum.

“We’re really working on making the courses multidisciplinary with multiple faculty members to make it something that’s a little bit fun and really shows them how all these disciplines work together to affect the human body,” she says.

The changes will build on the prior curriculum by adding interactive materials — like anatomical models and 3D-printed organs — and restructuring courses to facilitate multi­disciplinary instruction. Disciplines like anatomy, physiology, histology, microbiology, pathology and pharmacology will be taught in tandem by multiple faculty members to help students understand how each affects the body.

“The ultimate goal for medical school is to make good doctors,” says Huppmann. “They’re not going to sit in a classroom the rest of their lives, so we’re preparing them to go to clinics and hospitals. They need to understand how everything normally looks and functions, then start to teach them things that can go wrong and how they might want to treat those things.”