Teaching

Our primary teaching commitment is to College of Human Medicine medical students at Michigan State University. Additionally, we also teach graduate students, medical residents, and undergraduates. In all of our teaching, from one hour lectures to semester-long courses, in developing curricula to conducting workshops, we collaborate with faculty in the colleges we serve. In our teaching, as in all our work, we emphasize the ways in which theory and practice illuminate one another.

What We Teach

Shared Discovery Curriculum

Center faculty have been deeply involved in developing, implementing, and delivering the Shared Discovery Curriculum in the College of Human Medicine. Our faculty develop and deliver social context of clinical decisions (SCCD) content in all four years of the curriculum.

SCCD content areas include ethics, health policy, medical humanities, shared decision-making, and social determinants of health. Additionally, SCCD simulation exercises provide skill-building opportunities for medical students.

“The Center for Ethics plays a crucial role in the development and delivery of multiple curricular components. Our integrated curriculum places the social context of clinical decision-making into each chief complaint and concern document and therefore into each week of the curriculum. Appropriate curriculum and assessment has been woven into large group, small group, simulation, and preparatory materials and has required hours of cooperative effort and innovation by members of the Center. This has been absolutely crucial to the ethos of the Shared Discovery Curriculum.”

Dianne Wagner, MD, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education (September 2018)

Residency Education and Training

Center faculty engage in medical residency education and training. Areas of involvement include pediatrics and psychiatry. Below is a listing of recent psychiatry resident seminar topics.

  • Psychiatry Resident Seminars:
    • Choosing Wisely: Controlling Health Care Costs Justly
    • Sharing Decisions and Assessing Social Needs in Mental Health Practice
    • Was That a Seizure? Diagnosis in Lived Experience and Medical Practice
    • Indigenous Mental Health
    • Levels of Evidence: Clinician Perspectives on the Potential of DBS for Pediatric Patients with Treatment-Resistant OCD
    • Racism, Justice, and Mental Health

Other MSU Teaching

Office of the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
UGS 101: Big Ideas Seminar: Ethics, Genetics and Public Policy
This seminar explores issues related to Whole Genome Sequencing.

Scholarly Mentorship

Honors College Professorial Assistants

Michigan State University Honors College freshmen have the opportunity to be Professorial Assistants (PAs). PAs work regularly with teaching faculty on tasks related directly to research or teaching.
Read about the Center’s most recent group of PAs.