Kierstan Ryan (CMTI, 2015): “I really enjoyed Dr. Gdowski’s Human Anatomy course. As a graduate biomedical engineer student, it was the ideal class for me to take. This course exposed you to all the systems of the body, from the basics like the skeletal system to the specifics of the digestive system. The level at which Dr. Gdowski teaches each system lays a foundation that can be used in the future for other classes and your career.
The labs in this course further reinforced the lectures. The labs are all done using some type of model. These models can be either anatomical or cadaver. Being able to hold these models while learning about the topic, allowed me to visualize the system and further reinforce the information. I found the labs incredibly useful when it came to studying.
As a graduate student, Dr. Gdowski had a separate weekly meeting time where we would learn about diseases and disorders that were relevant to the system we were learning that week. This paired the information from class to diseases, like Aortic Aneurysms and Osteoporosis, which you hear about daily to what we were learning in class. As a biomedical engineer, I appreciated how it pulled together the anatomy to a disease and then to a technology that had been developed to treat the disease.
The graduate students also gave presentations on emerging or current technologies in the medical field. For me, this added an extra level to the course. I had the ability to not only learn anatomy but technology I could be working with as a career. Dr. Gdowski truly cares about the course and the students. She made it exciting to come to class each day knowing that she wanted us to learn as much as we could on the topic. I am grateful I took this course. This course has given me the knowledge and tools to use anatomy in my career.”