Scalpels & artists’ brushes
AU’s ‘silent teachers’ inspire students across disciplines By Bianca Dragul
The room was cold but bright from the light that poured in from the large windows. One student lost track of time as her charcoal-smudged hand floated across the surface of her sketchbook. She looked closely at the forearm and sketched the details she saw. Her subject? A “silent teacher” in Anderson University’s on-campus cadaver lab. Drawing students from the South Carolina School of the Arts recently joined science students to learn both science and art in the state-of-the-art lab. Professors and students use the phrase “silent teachers” to refer to individuals who have donated their bodies for teaching purposes after their deaths. Both science and art students spent the fall semester researching the intricacies of the human body and came together to host the collaborative “Flesh and Bone” showcase to present findings from their studies. Though participating in two distinct courses, both science and art students were able to make use of the lab for their individual research. Carrie Koenigstein, associate dean of sciences, said the connection between fields helps students gain a greater perspective and reflects the university’s effort to encourage collaboration between colleges. Koenigstein said each semester, a small group of science students is able to participate in the Cadaver Lab Practicum, a course that allows students to select, research, and present on a specific anatomical system. Science students make use of weekly lab hours to conduct research on cadavers. The lab and course are supervised by Nnenna Igwe, who has filled this role for three semesters. Igwe said she teaches students to use dissection materials and prepares them to independently manage the lab space.“This is an experience you can only get if you’re doing it yourself,” she said. Science students are actively learning in the cadaver lab, but they aren’t the only ones conducting research.
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Pexels photo by Skitterphoto
Jo Carol Mitchell-Rogers, associate dean of the South Carolina School of the Arts, teaches an upper-level drawing class to art students that is centered around depicting the human body, with a focus on muscle, tissue, and bone structure. Art students learn anatomy as part of the art class from Assistant Professor of Biology Anna Lee Travis. In assignments, individuals from the class draw what they learned about from the lab’s skeletal model or cadavers they studied. Mitchell-Rogers said students in her class are expected to master a technical understanding of the human body in their artistic work. “(The students) have to transcend just illustration... The (drawings) have to be well composed; they have to be well-crafted,” she said. “We’ve gotten some really interesting things.” The final project of the course requires students to complete four large-scale drawings of the human head and neck, torso, and either the leg and foot or
