Human Biology and Disease (Path GS-8345) course
Summer course: May 9 – June 2, 2025, 9 am until 11 am each day (in-person)
Credit: 1-3 hours
Registration: Opens March 25, 2025
Enrollment limit: endless
Description: requirements and attendance
Course organizers
The course has been organized by Dr. Mark de Caestecker MB BS, Ph.D., Dr. Matt Luther MD MSCI, nephrologists and physician scientists who direct the ASPIRE Program for Molecular Medicine (APMM), and Dr. Bradley Richmond MD Ph.D., a physician scientist from the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at Vanderbilt. Starr Hollyfield is a Senior Administrative Assistant in the Department of Pathology Microbiology and Immunology as well as the course coordinator.
Please address any inquiries about the course and registration to Starr Hollyfield at: starr.hollyfield@vumc.org.
Course Description
The aim of this course is to provide students with a comprehensive, organ-based overview, of human biology and disease pathophysiology from a clinical perspective. What distinguishes the proposed course from any other courses or programs that are currently offered at Vanderbilt, is that it will be comprehensive, covering all the major organ systems in the human body, and will be taught by clinicians from a clinical, rather than a basic science, perspective. There will be 15 topics taught covering 12 organ systems, each over 2-hour blocks coordinated by a physician or physician scientist involved in treating patients with common diseases affecting that organ system. Students will be instructed to register with Medscape (or UptoDate), on-line portals for students, physicians and healthcare professionals, and use to read about and write brief reports on clinical topics being discussed each day. The last session of each block will be in a case report format in which instructors bring along a patient suffering from the disease being discussed, so that students can develop an intimate understanding of what it is like to suffer from the disease being discussed during that teaching block.
To complete three credit hours (quality hours for full credit), students will be expected to attend 15 mornings of didactic and interactive teaching blocks over the three-week Human Biology and Disease immersion course. Some students may elect to attend 5 to 10 selected morning blocks for 1 or 2 credit hours rather than complete the 3 credit hour course. There are no prerequisites for attending this course other than being a Ph.D. student or post-doctoral fellow enrolled in one of the biomedical sciences programs at Vanderbilt University. The course will be graded based on attendance and on grading daily entries for each of the topic areas using a time stamped, on-line course management system.