I moved to Galveston in 1985 for my first job after residency, and have been at UTMB ever since. I’ve had many different roles during the past quarter century, in clinical service, administration, scientific research and education, but always first and foremost as a neuropathologist. Over the years, I have seen many changes in the educational process for medical students. Our current curriculum differs radically from the eight hour day of lectures that I remember from the first two years of medical school. I have to say that I greatly enjoy the small group interactions in the course laboratories and case discussion groups of our current curriculum, and I think our students finish medical school with overall better teamwork and critical thinking skills than my graduating class did. Some of the relationships developed with students during these small group interactions have persisted into the clinical years and beyond. I’ve often had students call or email me with questions about basic science topics that they’ve found relevant in their clinical rotations. My best story of that nature is about the time I was recognized by a young house staff physician in the emergency department of John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where I was waiting with a coworker who had fallen ill during our evacuation from Hurricane Rita. He walked by several times, and finally stopped to ask if I was Dr. Campbell from Galveston. He then reminded me that he had done a senior elective with me and had given a conference presentation about glioblastoma. At the time that topic must have seemed pretty esoteric, but in his new role as an emergency physician he had found the knowledge acquired by that experience especially relevant when he had to admit a patient with that disease.

For some years I’ve wanted to do a bit more for those students who want to review or dig a little deeper into those topics that I’ve had some responsibility for in their education. I’ve been especially attracted to the possibilities offered by web-based venues, but haven’t yet organized the time or resources to get anything done in that area. The attraction of the ADAPT program for me was the opportunity to actually accomplish something of that sort. We have a valuable collection of clinical cases and images that are now accessible only to our pathology residents and students who take electives. I really look forward to being able to provide this type of educational material to a wider community along with reviews of relevant web links and journal articles, and possibly a venue for discussion as well.