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THE CLAUDE BERNARD DISTINGUISHED LECTURE

PHYSIOLOGY’S RECONDITE CURRICULUM

Basic Science Division, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada A1B 3V6

Abstract

Dr. Penny Hansen is an international physiology educator. She was born in America and became a Canadian citizen, and her husband is from Sweden. Dr. Hansen has a reputation throughout the world from international meetings and visiting professorships in North America and Europe. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Ohio, and her PhD and entire academic career have been at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which is closer to London than to New Orleans. She found a hospitable environment and stayed. Remember how some jet planes were grounded on Sept. 11 at Gander, Newfoundland; the local people opened their homes, transported passengers in school buses, and served them free meals for a couple of days.

Dr. Hansen has received local and national awards for her teaching skills. At St. John’s, her ideas about education quickly outgrew the Basic Science Division in the Faculty of Medicine. She went from Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education to Director of Academic Development for Medicine to director of a center for health professional education for five professional schools. With this track record she might have been chosen to be dean of a medical school.

Dr. Hansen’s most notable contribution to international physiology has been in editing our Society’s teaching journal, Advances in Physiology Education, for nine years. During that time, she has written provocative editorials, encouraged authors from developing countries, and found ways to incorporate fresh ideas about teaching. As far as I know, no other society in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology has a journal devoted to teaching. This is a tribute to Dr. Hansen and her associate editors in their encouragement of teachers to do research on teaching and publish their findings.

Dr. Hansen will continue writing and is authoring a textbook entitled Physiology of Life Situations, which will have unique organization. Dr. Hansen was recently appointed co-chair of the Education Committee for the International Union of Physiological Sciences. In that role, she is responsible for conducting teaching workshops and providing resources to teachers of physiology worldwide, particularly in developing countries. She spends time each winter teaching at St. George’s Medical School in Granada. Dr. Hansen is also the elected chair of the Teaching Section for the next three years.

It is particularly appropriate that, on this Earth Day 2002, whose motto is "One People, One Earth, One Future," we hear a citizen of Canada who teaches worldwide talk about"Physiology’s Recondite Curriculum."—Roger TannerThies, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physiology, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Key words: physiology education; case-based learning; health promotion; scholarship

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