Education’s golden rule
Where do great educators come from? Are they born or made? If nurture, as opposed to nature, plays at least some role in their development, what kind of experiences seem to be the most formative? As we seek to enhance radiology education, it is vital that we ask such questions, and it is not enough simply to ask what degrees someone has earned or how well they scored on standardized tests. Instead we need to dig deeper. With this article, we begin a series of occasional articles seeking to provide a deeper, biographical perspective on outstanding educators, in hopes that their stories will prove both edifying and inspirational for other educators seeking to enrich their teaching.
Isaac Wu, MD, is an assistant professor of radiology in the Indiana University Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, where he has been on faculty for 4 years. He is widely recognized as one of the best educators in this large department that focuses on education. At Indiana University, even residents who are not known for their dedication and affection for daily radiology conferences express regret when they discover they have missed one of his. He has won multiple departmental awards for teaching. He is simply a superb educator. What makes him so good?
At first glance, Isaac’s excellence as an educator is difficult to account for. He immigrated to the United States from Taiwan as a teenager, speaking not a word of English. Living with his uncle’s family in California, he learned English by watching television, movies, and part-time work. Specifically, in high school he held jobs simultaneously in two different fast food restaurants, McDonalds and Burger King, where a good command of English was not required. Because he spent so many hours there, his friends often referred to him as “The Burgermeister.” As an international student, the language barrier made his studies difficult, but he worked hard and earned admission to college.
He attended college in Oregon, where he majored in economics and minored in Japanese, expecting to pursue a career in business. During his undergraduate studies, he spent 2 years abroad in Japan, studying Japanese and international business. While there, he met another study-abroad student who came from a Brazilian family of plastic surgeons. The Brazilian student told him about his family’s charitable work back home helping homeless children who had suffered disfiguring injuries.
This convinced Isaac that he should pursue a career in medicine. He now says that had he known how long and arduous the path to medicine would be, he would not have chosen it. But with little understanding of what he was getting himself into, and perhaps with an overly romanticized view of medicine, he went back to Oregon and started over on a premedical track. His efforts paid off when he was admitted to the Oregon Health Sciences University, where he intended to pursue training for a career in primary care. He knew about organizations such as Doctors without Borders, and he envisioned himself doing international relief work.
In medical school, however, he began to feel burned out by his experiences in clinical medicine. Fortunately, the school offered a pathology internship program for medical students, and he leapt at the opportunity. He quickly got to assume intern-level responsibility, performing dozens of autopsies on his own, and found that he loved using his eyes to make diagnoses. This experience revealed a completely different, “behind-the-scenes” aspect of medicine. But as he progressed, he began to worry that he might never see a living patient again. He explained the situation to one of his teachers, who suggested that he consider a career in radiology.
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