Cadaveric anatomy: training advanced undergraduates in human dissection using both student‐centered learning and service learning

As the number of classically trained anatomists decreases and anatomists begin the job of recruiting the next generation of teachers, Westminster College is training undergraduates in classical anatomical dissection. The program is a competitive independent study for five senior students selected through a rigorous application process. Students receive instruction in dissection techniques and then complete the dissection as a team using Grants Dissector. This year’s class was divided into 3 blocks: block I‐‐Back and upper limb, block II‐‐head, neck and thorax, and block III‐‐abdomen, pelvis, perineum and lower limb. For each block students worked from structures lists from a classical medical anatomy curriculum. The students were tested on a sampling of 50 tagged structures from a list of 475 from block I, comparable to a medical school gross anatomy practical. The scores ranged from a 94 to a 74. In addition to the student‐centered learning components of the program, the program has offered service learning modules in which the students have presented in such courses as Biological Psychology, Insects and Human Affairs, Introduction to Biology, Women’s Health, Vertebrate Histology, as well as to interested faculty groups. The course in human anatomy is innovative in that the course is not designed using prosection, and that the course is independent of formal instruction. The students, after the completion of the semester, will have the capacity to teach gross anatomy dissection to a variety of audiences, suggesting that the new generation of anatomists may rise from undergraduate programs in human dissection. Funding provided by Westminster College Board of Trustees and the University of Missouri Anatomical Gift Program.