In the 10-week gross anatomy course that he coordinates, Robert Binhammer, Ph.D., introduces students to the rigors of medical school. He knows that the first-year students see him as demanding.
“I think it’s an important job to start them off on the right foot,” Dr. Binhammer said. “We get them to recognize how to deal with an overabundance of information. We let them know that we’re interested in problem-solving, not memorizing data.”
After a few years, most students realize that Dr. Binhammer had their best interests in mind as he challenged them to think deeply about the material they were covering.
“Zillions of students tell me that when they stop and think about anatomy, they are grateful for the approach that I took,” Dr. Binhammer said. “After it’s all over, I think they remember gross anatomy with some fondness. Most of them think that I was a bear, but it’s probably what they needed.”
For his teaching, Dr. Binhammer is being honored with an Outstanding Teaching Award this year. The award, given by the UNMC Faculty Senate, will be presented at the Annual Faculty Meeting on Tuesday, April 20.
A native of Watertown, Wisc., Dr. Binhammer put himself through college with money that he earned picking fruit on his uncle’s farm. A biology major at Kalamazoo (Mich.) College, Dr. Binhammer had no future plans during his senior year until a professor from the University of Texas-Galveston visited Kalamazoo. Two weeks later, Dr. Binhammer was headed to Galveston, where he would earn his Ph.D. During his first year in Galveston, he lived on $900 – for the entire year.
“There were a lot of 19-cent lunches of soup and crackers,” he quips.
After the first year, he married his college sweetheart, Anne. Upon Dr. Binhammer’s graduation, the couple moved to Cincinnati, where Dr. Binhammer taught anatomy and conducted research on the effects of radiation. He also served in the Dean’s Office, as an assistant dean and later as an associate dean.
In 1979, he came to UNMC as the associate dean for student affairs and curriculum in the College of Medicine. He also had an appointment in the anatomy department, and his focus shifted full time to the department in the mid-1980s.
Next fall will mark Dr. Binhammer’s 49th year of teaching gross anatomy. He has
coordinated the gross anatomy course at UNMC for the past dozen years, and he also coordinates the six-week neurology core course that first-year medical students take in the spring. He also is the chairman of the college’s scholastic evaluation committee.
It’s through the anatomy course, though, where Dr. Binhammer leaves his biggest impression on students. He’s known for wearing his “badminton shorts” for his lecture on gaits, for posting a “question of the day” before the start of class, and for stubbornly refusing to give students answers to questions before they’ve given them serious thought. Frustrated students sometimes mutter, among other things, a saying made popular by their predecessors in medical school: “You haven’t been hammered until you’ve been hammered by Binhammer.”
“I like to challenge the students to get them to think about things before giving them the answers,” Dr. Binhammer said. “The students tell me, ‘Tell me what we need to know for the test.’ I want them to make sense of it, to think about it.”
Dr. Binhammer notes that the six professors who help to teach the anatomy course have logged 220 years of instructing students.
“I think we have the premier course in the nation,” Dr. Binhammer said. “Not much fazes us; we’ve seen it all.”
The course has gotten better, Dr. Binhammer said, since the professors began using the concept of “living anatomy.” The concept pairs up students, and they test range of motion and muscles; draw lungs and the heart on each other; and find pulses, nerves and “all the bony prominences you can palpate,” Dr. Binhammer said. The students are tested in a private setting with a faculty member present.
“I didn’t come up with the concept of living anatomy, but I’m thoroughly wed to it,” Dr. Binhammer said. “It gets anatomy out of the dissecting room. It’s not dead.”
Often seen walking briskly through the halls, Dr. Binhammer stays active away from the office, as well. He enjoys roller-blading, gardening, wood sculpting, singing in the church choir, playing the recorder, reading award-winning novels and sailing on the St. Lawrence River, near where he and his wife spend three weeks a summer. He also leads a Christmas-time sing-a-long in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater. He said he always looks forward to a new school year and the incoming students.
“I think that association with young, bright people is just very satisfying,” Dr. Binhammer said. “I look forward to the new class coming in, and getting to know a little bit about some of them.”