Sixty years of learning and teaching physiology

This is a memoir of my experiences in learning and teaching Physiology. It begins in 1962 when I entered the University of Washington as a medical student and began research in a physiology laboratory, which led to a Ph.D. degree in Physiology and Biophysics to go with my M.D. degree in 1968. At this time, both groups of students participated in the same physiology course containing both lectures and laboratories. After postdoctoral research at the NIH and in Cambridge, UK, in 1973 I joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco where I participated in the teaching of medical students and graduate students for nearly 15 years. By this time, the teaching of medical and graduate students had largely separated. In 1987, I moved to the University of Michigan as Professor and Chair of Physiology where my role in teaching was organizational as well as participatory for the next 35 years. In this work, I compare the teaching of medical students as well as graduate students and focus on how it has changed over this 60-year period. Over this time both medical and graduate Ph.D. education have become more integrative. Medical education is now taught in organ blocks rather than courses, and I participated in organizing the teaching of the gastrointestinal block. At Michigan, there is no longer a separate medical school class in Physiology, and graduate students enter a combined, "Program in Biomedical Science" for a year before choosing a mentor and department. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Teaching remains an important part of the career of academic physiologists. It is important for schools offering the Ph.D. to provide instruction and experience in teaching. The American Physiology Society has developed new programs to assist teachers and many universities have centers on learning and teaching.