Columns:: Honors and Awards: Regents Award

since 12/15/98

Columns::April 22, 2002

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Campus News

Regents Award

Linda Medleau
Professor of Small Animal Medicine

Linda Medleau, called a “master teacher” by her peers for her inspiration and abilities both in and out of the classroom, is a

recipient of this year’s Regents Teaching Excellence Award presented by the board of regents.
The system-wide award, which includes a $5,000 prize, recognizes individual faculty members as well as academic programs for a strong commitment to teaching and service to students.
A professor of dermatology in small animal medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Medleau teaches clinical dermatology to veterinary students, interns and dermatology residents. Medleau plans to donate the $5,000 award to her department to be used for resident instruction.
“Linda’s enthusiasm for teaching translates into a fundamental connection with her students, regardless of whether they are graduate veterinary students or practitioners,” says Keith A. Hnilica, assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Tennessee and a former colleague at UGA.
Students from the classes of 1991, 1993 and 1999 at the College of Veterinary Medicine have honored Medleau with the faculty recognition award. She was the College of Veterinary Medicine’s first Lilly Teaching Fellow in 1987-88 and received the college’s Norden Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997. In 2000, she was awarded UGA’s highest teaching award, the Josiah Meigs Award for Excellence in Teaching.
According to students and residents, Medleau’s career is all the more inspiring because of the challenges she has faced in dealing with her physical disabilities. She was diagnosed during her childhood with Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disease that results in profound hearing impairment and blindness.
“Dr. Medleau did one thing that no other teacher could. She made me use all my senses--vision, hearing, touch, and smell--to diagnose a case. Her unique abilities taught me that any case can be diagnosed. . . . I have a deep respect for her and her abilities,” says one graduate.
“Perhaps because of her disability, Dr. Medleau has had to be an innovator. . . . She has succeeded as a clinician, a scientist, a parent, and a teacher,” says William R. Fenner, associate dean for student affairs at Ohio State University. “She has done this in spite of significant physical limitations while maintaining a sense of humor and joy in life.”
This year, with a teaching grant from the Office of Instructional Support and Development, she will lead a project to develop problem-solving programs using wireless keypads to stimulate interactive learning and to promote active participation by all students in the classroom.
“She brings the real world into the classroom by encouraging us to achieve a diagnosis in the most efficient way possible,” says Gail Davison, a third-year veterinary student. “Personally, she is a role model for perseverance and dedication in a veterinary medical career and for humor and compassion in everyday life.”

--Dot Sparer

Meigs Award
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