Professors Merkel and Pott receive recognition from MCW
UW-Green Bay Associate Professors Brian Merkel (featured photo) and Uwe Pott have each been selected to receive a teaching award from the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). They have been named one of MCW’s Outstanding Medical Student Teachers for 2016-2017. Award winners are nominated and recommended faculty who “advanced medical student learning and provided added value to the program.”
Associate Prof. Uwe Pott
MCW’s Curriculum and Evaluation Committee (CEC) awarded Outstanding Medical School Teacher pins to educators as well as a letter of commendation recognizing their excellence in teaching during the 2016-2017 academic year.
Merkel and Pott teach under the “Infectious Agents and Host Immunity” umbrella of classes. They have been working as adjunct instructors for MCW for two-plus years, along with some of their UW-Green Bay Human Biology colleagues.
“These experiences help us be better teachers, mentors and advisors for our pre-health UW-Green Bay students that advance to medical, veterinary, physical therapy, chiropractic and other programs,” Merkel said.
“There are a variety of teaching opportunities for us,” Merkel said, including case-based workshops and lectures. Merkel described how the partnership with MCW and the opportunity to teach there impacts his teaching and classroom leadership…
“The preparation time to teach any of these activities for medical students is significant because the material has to be taught at a very high level,” Merkel said. “Though we do not teach the material at the same level for our undergraduates it helps us teach the material to them more effectively because of the rigorous preparation to teach medical students. Additionally, we have to learn new things to prepare to teach for this population — we bring these teaching ‘nuggets’ into our classes with our undergraduates. We also teach in teams with physicians and other Ph.D.’s. As such, we learn from them, too; and, once again, share these gems with our undergraduates. Finally, these experiences help us convey to students seeking admission into challenging programs what they need to do now to prepare effectively for the challenges that await them.”
