When I was growing up, I thought for sure I was going to be a civil engineer like my father. I enjoyed surveying and the thought of designing roads, bridges, and storm drains was very interesting. However, when I started college I had a good friend who was pre-med, and then decided that being a physician was very appealing. I had a role model in Dr. Thompson, my pediatrician, who had treated my asthma with very good results. I was accepted to Vanderbilt Medical School and I had a lot of great teachers there. A pathologist, Dr. Robert Collins, is the teacher of whom I have the greatest memories. Every month we had clinical pathological conferences and the students were given the history of a patient and we tried to “solve” the case. We went to the conference where a clinician discussed the case and then Dr. Collins reviewed the pathology and, most importantly, explained all the clinical findings. Those lessons stayed with me my entire career.

As I went on to my training in internal medicine at Cornell, I realized how enjoyable it was to work with students and teach them about clinical medicine. I then moved out West, and completed my fellowship in nephrology at UCLA. I stayed on as a faculty member at a county hospital where I was in charge of the UCLA students who did rotations, and I also became very involved in residency education. We relocated to Connecticut in 1991, since my wife and I felt it would be a better place to raise a family, and we were right. I have been in my current position since 1996 and I am lucky to be involved in teaching all 4 years of the curriculum. When I was at the county hospital, I also ran the ICU for a few years, and as a result, I now do a lot of teaching in basic science related to kidney physiology, as well as pulmonary and cardiovascular disease.

In the third-year curriculum, I am in charge of Multidisciplinary Ambulatory Experience (a 32-week course), and the four-week Inpatient Medicine course. In the fourth-year curriculum, I am in charge of the Advanced Clinical Experience course (three months) which has subinternship, critical care and emergency medicine sections.

When applicants ask me “What is the best thing about Uconn?,” I reply “The students.” They are remarkable not only in their intellect but also in how caring they are, and in how devoted they are to the community. The amount of time the students spend in student-run clinics including South Park Clinic (homeless shelter for adults and some children), South Marshall (pediatric clinic), Migrant Farm Workers, and Adolescent YMCA (shelter for female teenagers) is remarkable. As the attending faculty member at South Park and Adolescent YMCA, I get the opportunity to see how dedicated the students are to the patients.

Other things that I like most about Uconn are the small class size where many faculty know the names of all the students, a large number of small group conferences, and probably the most useful – the early clinical exposure. As a result, students early on see the clinical relevance of what they are learning in the basic science curriculum. It is extremely helpful since we are able in the second year to teach them activities such as oral presentations, clinical reasoning, and write ups that are usually not taught until the third year. I consider myself very fortunate to be a faculty member and have my current job.

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