Ahmad Mohammad was fascinated by cranial nerves, blood vessels in the brain and other topics covered in his second-year anatomy course taught by Rebecca MacPherson.<\/p>\n
But his interest stemmed from more than just the content. Equally captivating, he says, was how the Associate Professor of Health Sciences explained highly complicated concepts in a way that he and his peers could easily grasp.<\/p>\n
The positive experience led him back to the class two years later as MacPherson\u2019s Teaching Assistant (TA), where he continued to be inspired by her approach to teaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cI signed up to be a TA because I enjoyed the way she taught the course so much,\u201d says Mohammad, who graduated during Brock\u2019s Spring Convocation Wednesday, June 15 with a Bachelor of Science in Medical Sciences. He will be starting his master\u2019s with MacPherson in the fall.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Rebecca-MacPherson-Convocation-1050x700.jpg\")
Associate Professor of Health Sciences Rebecca MacPherson at Brock’s Wednesday morning Convocation ceremony.<\/p><\/div>\n
During Convocation, MacPherson was recognized for her positive impact on and dedication to her students with the 2022 Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Award\u00a0for Excellence in Teaching.<\/p>\n
MacPherson was an obvious choice for the honour, says Dean Peter Tiidus.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. MacPherson epitomizes all round faculty excellence,\u201d he says. \u201cIn addition to being an outstanding teacher, Dr. MacPherson also runs a world-class, externally funded research program and is involved in many aspects of departmental work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis recognition of her teaching excellence and concern for her students\u2019 success is very well deserved,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
MacPherson teaches courses in human anatomy, human pathology and pathophysiology of the metabolic syndrome \u2014 a cluster of abnormalities that result in hypertension, central obesity and insulin resistance, among others.<\/p>\n
Shortly after joining Brock in 2016, MacPherson was among a group of faculty who negotiated access to McMaster University\u2019s cadaver lab, located in the Roy and Lois Cairns Health and Bioscience Research Complex on Brock\u2019s main campus.<\/p>\n
MacPherson developed plans on how her classes would use the lab\u2019s space and facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing for students to look at a plastic model of the human body where everything is perfectly proportioned and colour-coded,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen students see a human cadaver, they get a better appreciation of the anatomical variations from person to person. They also form more of a connection to the person who passed away, whose last wish it was for students to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacPherson also arranged for McMaster University to deliver samples from its massive library of specimens of different disease, such as lung cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s disease, for students to examine in their pathology classes for \u201chands-on, real-life experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
One innovative teaching technique that impressed Mohammad was MacPherson\u2019s use of mnemonics \u2014 patterns of letters or numbers \u2014 to get students to remember technical terms associated with physiological processes and systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lucky enough to be a TA because she taught us the content so well in my second year that I still remembered the content two years later,\u201d says Mohammad.<\/p>\n
Danny Marko (BSc \u201919, MSc \u201921) took seven classes with MacPherson during his undergraduate education and was supervised by her for his graduate degree. He says he has observed that MacPherson \u201cbelieves that her success is defined through the success of the students she can shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, a discouraged Marko was trying to change his research project following eight months away from the lab due to pandemic measures and his less-than-impressive preliminary research results.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. MacPherson pushed me to stick with it,\u201d says Marko. \u201cShe told me, \u2018Be patient, it will come, it will work out, you\u2019re going to hit roadblocks like this, you\u2019ve got to know how to push through these kinds of things.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuelled by her confidence, Marko ploughed through. Not only was the project a huge success, but Marko finished his master\u2019s early and was first author on his team\u2019s work, published March 28 in the American Journal of Physiology – Cell Physiology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\nFor her part, MacPherson says her goal as an educator \u201cis to teach from the heart and not the textbook.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to use a hands-on approach where I encourage students to interact with the material and one another,\u201d she says. \u201cI want students to leave a lecture, lab or seminar with a true knowledge and appreciation of the logical, elegant simplicity of the human body.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During his time as a student in her anatomy class, Ahmad Mohammad was captivated by how Rebecca MacPherson, Associate Professor of Health Sciences, explained highly complicated concepts in a way that he and his peers could easily grasp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":78834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,36,7,1,4,4665],"tags":[11667,156,11668,1696,7488,11669,5505,11670,11671,470,11673,11672,6073,1759],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78837,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78831\/revisions\/78837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}