UC Faculty Member Wins Medical Education Top Honor

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine educator Bruce Giffin, PhD, has been named the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 2012 Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award winner.
 
The award is one of nine individual awards and one medical school award that the AAMC will present during the association’s annual meeting Saturday, Nov. 3, in San Francisco.
  
"It is an extremely well-deserved award and is among the highest awards in medical education nationally,” says Andrew Filak, MD, chair of the UC College of Medicine’s medical education department, where Giffin serves as vice chair. 
 
Giffin, who oversees gross anatomy in the integrated curriculum and is block director for the "Fundamentals of Medical Science” and "the Brain, Mind, and Behavior” blocks, and directs the college’s Body Donation Program, joined the UC medical college faculty in 1990 after beginning his career as a secondary school teacher and serving a graduate teaching assistantship at the college from 1981 to 1985. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Dayton and his PhD in anatomy and cell biology from UC.

For the past 20 years, Giffin has displayed a dedication to medicine and a passion for teaching that is consistently recognized by the medical students he teaches. Year after year he has received a student- selected "Apple” award for teaching, and student, faculty and staff nominations filled a binder when Giffin was nominated for, and won, the university’s A.B. "Dolly” Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching.
 
Giffin’s commitment to his students often extends beyond the classroom. He opens his home every Thanksgiving to medical students who cannot be with their families and shares his love of music by directing the men’s and women’s choruses in the College of Medicine.
 
The Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Awards were established by the AOA medical honor society in 1988 to provide national recognition to faculty members who have distinguished themselves in medical student education. The award is named for longtime AOA executive secretary Robert J. Glaser, MD.

Giffin will receive a $10,000 grant and the college will receive $2,500 for teaching activities. The college’s AOA chapter will receive a stipend of $1,000 toward its activities.

The Association of American Medical Colleges is a not-for-profit association representing all 141 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 51 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and nearly 90 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 128,000 faculty members, 75,000 medical students and 110,000 resident physicians. Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals is available at

www.aamc.org/newsroom