Ebert Approves Student Proposal For Independent Medical Studies

Dr. Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, has accepted the experimental program of independent study presented last month by a group of second-year medical students. The experiment will allow selected students to determine their own study in the patho-physiology course that occupies 75 per cent of the second-year students' second semester.

In an interview last night, Dr. David G. Freiman, head of the patho-physiology course, acknowledged that Ebert told the students who had proposed the program he was willing to try the experiment next semester. However, Ebert was unavailable for comment.

So far 24 students have expressed interest in the plan. Although its exact details have not been worked out, the 24 will tentatively be placed together in a lab group divided into smaller groups of three or four, each headed by a volunteer faculty advisor.

Rather than attend the usual series of lectures in patho-physiology, the large integrated study of disease processes, the students will engage in independent study techniques of directed reading and discussion, as well as the usual labs and demonstrations. The importance of the program is that the students will determine their own course of study, as they had requested.

Since the initial approval of the study, a few of the students have offered Ebert a proposal that would enable them to skip the unit tests in the course, taking an over-all comprehensive exam at the end of the year.

Ebert has made no comment on the new proposals, but a spokesman for the group last night said that the chances seemed good for administrative approval.

Several members of the group felt the success of the limited experiment would effect significant changes in the current teaching methods in the Med School.

Passive Teaching

The second-year students presented a letter of intent to Ebert, Freiman, and Dr. Alexander Leaf, chairman of the curriculum committee of the Medical School, on Dec. 16.

They decried the current passive teaching methods of lecture and laboratory. They felt that medical students "learn more because we are told to than because we are curious." The letter proposed independent study as an experiment in "active learning" directed by the student.

The administrators accepted the plan after meetings with the students over the holidays.