Brian Decker

“Being a doctor, you’re constantly being educated. Hopefully you have a lot of knowledge, but that doesn’t make you a great teacher. There was a lot for me to learn.”

Dr. Brian Decker, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine

After Dr. Brian Decker finished Pharmacy and Medical school, he knew he wanted to an academic career, but when he started as a member of the Nephrology faculty in 2007, he realized that there was more to teaching than just pushing your students to memorize. “Faculty are good learners. We’ve done well with the learning part of it, but we’re certainly deficient in teaching, and there are quite a bit of new ideas and new approaches to clinical teaching that aren’t discussed in medical school, residency, or fellowship. If you’re going to be faculty at IU, and participate in clinical teaching, you need to devote some time to improving.”

Dr. Decker found opportunities to continue learning by attending OFAPD lectures. After his initial work with the Stanford Clinical Teaching Program’s Peer Assessment Project, Dr. Decker became involved with the Academy of Teaching Scholars and describes it as “another avenue to become involved for people who care deeply about clinical teaching and making teaching better.” Having been through what he describes as an abundance of didactic classroom learning, Dr. Decker says that his ongoing involvement in seminars and projects has allowed him to explore more interactive ways to engage learners. He says, “We all have the same goal—that our students, residents and fellows learn as much as they can while they’re with us. We shouldn’t be relying on methods that don’t work as well as others.”