The Herbert Black Unit for Teaching and Learning in Medicine is helping to change the way medical students are educated at McGill. With these new rooms on the second floor of the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building, students now have ample space for study, discussion, meetings and classes. And it's all available 24 hours a day.
The Unit was designed to accommodate the Faculty of Medicine's new curriculum, which emphasizes small-group teaching. Dean Abraham Fuks says the new curriculum helps make students more self-reliant and self-directed, and encourages cooperation.
"They're working with their peers as colleagues and not competitors," he says.
The Unit was made possible thanks to a campaign gift from Herbert Black, president of American Iron and Metal Company in Montreal. Black's gift also allowed for the renovation of pathology rooms in the Lyman Duff Building.
Andrew Attwell, president of the Medical Students Society, said students formerly had a difficult time finding small rooms for study and discussion. "Your donation has solved many of our problems," Attwell told Black at a reception to open the Unit in December. "It has had a great impact on our lives, and will impact on the lives of many generations of medical students."
"I always considered it a privilege to be able to give and to share," says Black, who in 1989 endowed the Herbert Black Chair of Oncology. The position is held by Dr. Richard Margolese.
A proposed molecular diagnostics laboratory at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) will provide a "one-stop shopping" service to physicians confirming a diagnosis. Equipped with the latest in DNA-based technology, the lab will enable MNI doctors to conduct tests that will accurately detect genetic and neurological diseases such as Huntington's disease and muscular dystrophy.
"Now it's very difficult for doctors to find a facility that will provide comprehensive molecular testing--there are only a handful of North American centres that offer this kind of service," says Dr. Jack Snipes, assistant professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Pathology at the MNI. "But with this new laboratory, we will be able to offer a clinical service that will provide doctors and patients with a conclusive diagnosis quickly."
The Institute's molecular diagnostics initiative will cost about $2.5 million, but the MNI recently received a significant boost through the campaign from an American-based foundation. The Kresge Foundation awarded the MNI a $450,000 (U.S.) challenge grant toward the creation of the molecular diagnostics laboratory and the renovation of several individual research labs. One of only two Canadian institutions to have been awarded a grant in 1995, the MNI has been challenged by the Kresge Foundation to raise the remaining funds by the end of June 1996.
Dr. Snipes says he is confident the MNI will raise the funds for the molecular diagnostics initiative, and expects the laboratory, which is currently under construction, to be in full operation within the next three years. He also adds that the laboratory will benefit the broader Canadian community--its implications are far-reaching. "There is a lot to be learned from knowing more about molecular diagnostics," he explains. "It will help us find out how a genetic defect causes the disease...I know that treatments will follow further down the road."