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Learning communities to honor UW Medical School luminaries
By Dian Land
 University of Wisconsin Medical School luminaries will be honored in a unique way when their names are linked to the five learning communities that will be a key feature of the new Health Sciences Learning Center.
Designed to create a sense of unity, the learning communities will provide a physical space for student interaction as well as a formalized group to which students will belong. Thirty first-year students will combine with 30 second-year students to form each learning community, a meshing that will enhance coaching from year to year. The communities will be located on the second floor of the new building, and each will consist of small-group break-out rooms, a laboratory and a computer demonstration center. The goal is to make the medical school experience more manageable.
The learning communities will be named after people who have played critical roles in the development and enhancement of University of Wisconsin Medical School. They include Charles R. Bardeen, MD; William S. Middleton, MD; brothers Adolf Gundersen, MD, and Gunnar Gundersen, MD; Betty Bamforth, MD; and Alice McPherson, MD. Beginning with the following historical profile of Bardeen, we will be introducing Quarterly readers to these people who been so important to the school.
 Charles Russell Bardeen, MD
Historians no doubt agree that Charles Bardeen, MD, was the man who has influenced the University of Wisconsin Medical School more than any other. As the school's founding dean, he guided it through its crucial first years and perhaps its most significant developments. Bardeen's lasting influence was felt well beyond the Medical School--some of his ideas fundamentally changed American medical education.
Bardeen came to Madison in 1904, a time when the state was flourishing under the progressive leadership of Governor Robert LaFollette, and the university was expanding under President Charles Van Hise. The two shared the view that the one element the University of Wisconsin-Madison was missing was a medical school. Bardeen, a graduate of the innovative Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was asked to create a two-year program fully integrated into the university. It would be one of the first few to be unlike the freestanding proprietary schools that so long had been the norm.
Aware that he needed to garner wide support for the new school, Bardeen addressed the state medical society, state politicians and the general public. Although he was a reserved man, he was a forceful advocate who insisted that modern medical practitioners required the broad scientific training only a university could provide. In three short years the new program was up and running, with 23 men and three women enrolled.
Bardeen was a scholarly physician but he never had a clinical practice nor was he particularly adept at interpersonal interactions. Despite this, he made it his business to know his faculty and students as individuals. He was a visionary dean. He wanted the new University of Wisconsin Medical School to evolve into a four-year program, one that would also introduce future physicians to physical diagnosis and clinical methods.
However, the vision would not materialize for 17 years. Bardeen had to battle local physicians, who believed that such an institution--one that would require a flow of patients and the establishment of a clinic--would rob them of their livelihood. Global crises such as World War I and the 1918 influenza epidemic severely diverted everyone's attention. But finally, in 1924, Wisconsin General Hospital opened its doors, and a year later the Medical School invited students to participate in a four-year curriculum.
Still, for several years the school had difficulty meeting the clinical needs of the extended curriculum. From Bardeen's expansive mind came a solution: co-optation of state physicians into the medical school's educational activities. Beginning in 1926, fourth-year medical students would spend eight weeks working in one of several private practices scattered across the state. The preceptorship rapidly grew into one of the most popular aspects of medical education at the University of Wisconsin. By the time Bardeen died in 1935, imitations had spawned across the nation, and the preceptor concept became an important national innovation.
Although students at UW Medical School today are introduced to clinical activities beginning in their first days at school, the fourth-year preceptorships--which feature intensive one-on-one interaction between students, physicians and patients--remain integral to their training. Many students report that the preceptorships are among the most valuable experiences in their education.
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