A considerable lot of Prof. Renae Brodie's first-year science students begin the
semester sure that they recognize what's in store in an early on science course.
Anyhow throughout the initial couple of weeks of class, they're investigating not cell
structure under a microscope lens yet a seventeenth-century Flemish painting—in
the MHC Art Museum. Applying the investigative process in another setting, they
watch a painting from a separation, then move closer to note points of interest. At
last, they portray and clarify the works of art, offering proof for their understanding
Brodie’s students are hardly alone. Sixty-two professors in twenty-six academic
disciplines brought their students to the museum in the past year.
What’s the point? Learning skills that will help students succeed now and long after
graduation and benefit society. John Stomberg, museum director, aim to makes the
museum a campus crossroads where art meets ideas—and students—of all kinds.
Here’s how Art Museum work helps pre-medical and other science-oriented students.
Premed Students Improve Diagnostic Skills
A group of future physicians clusters in the museum’s Carson Teaching Gallery for a
biology class. “To be great at medicine, your powers of observation need to be
stellar, because patients don’t tell you everything you need to know,” says guest
speaker Dr. Jill Griffin. So the students—who previously have practiced precise
description using seventeenth-century Dutch paintings—say what they see in a
series of clinical photographs.
One is obviously a common blister, but Griffin pulls the students back from rushing to
a diagnosis. “OK,” she says, summarizing their observations. “We see a thumb with a
red ring around the outside, topped by a fluid-filled sack of skin.” Students add details
until they deduce that this patient’s hand was burned by splashes of hot liquid. “Art
forces us to look at the world differently,” says Emilie Heidel one of the graduates. “I
think the point was to teach us how to stop making judgments and to let the data tell
us what it has to say—a useful skill for both artists and scientists.”
Dean of prehealth programs David Gardner explains that this method helps premed
students “because those who are trained to be more precise in their observations will
be better at making diagnoses in a clinical setting.” Stomberg describes the
advantage using more artistic language. “To a doctor, the difference between having
an ear infection or not is the difference between having your ear be Veronese red
versus Titian red.” Art then will help train these doctors to become better and will
ultimately benefit society.