Development of an education track in anatomy PhD at Indiana University School of Medicine

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed fundamental changes in the way graduate students are trained in anatomy departments. No longer are students routinely required to learn and teach the traditional anatomical subdisciplines to earn their PhDs. Paradoxically, a doctorate in anatomy no longer guarantees any expert knowledge of anatomy. As classically trained anatomists retire and leave the workforce, they are not being replaced by newly minted PhDs with the requisite training and career focus needed to maintain the teaching mission. In consequence, the nation's health professional schools are faced with a growing shortage of qualified anatomy instructors, especially in gross anatomy. To help address this problem, the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, in consultation with the School of Education, designed a separate PhD track for students who desire a career focus in education rather than biomedical research. The goal of the education track is twofold: (1) to provide students with extensive training in all of the anatomical subdisciplines coupled with sufficient teaching experience to be fully prepared to assume major educational responsibilities upon graduation and (2) to train students to conduct rigorous, hypothesis‐driven medical education research and other scholarly work necessary for promotion and tenure. The proposed five‐year training program will require formal coursework in anatomy (31 hours), education (18 hours), statistics (6 hours), and electives (9 hours), as well as 26 hours for an educational research project. Once approved, the education track will produce a small but stable supply of doctoral‐level anatomy educators for a growing academic market.