Holly Bender had no intention of becoming a teacher. Bender, (DVM ’79), PhD, Dipl. ACVP, attended Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine with plans of entering a dairy practice. She is now a veterinary clinical pathologist who focuses on creating tools and methods to improve higher education, especially in the areas of diagnostic skills and problemsolving. Bender is associate director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, director of the Preparing Future Faculty program, and professor of clinical pathology at the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine. The story she tells about her road to teaching is a story of chance encounters and spontaneous ideas. It is the story of relationships— both intentional and serendipitous.

Hooked on Teaching

Bender and a multi-disciplinary team have developed ThinkSpace, an educational technology that teaches students diagnostic skills and problem-solving. For veterinary students, this includes assessing an animal’s symptoms and analyzing lab results in order to make a more accurate diagnosis. The tool grew out of Bender’s earlier project, Diagnostic Pathfinder, which she developed with a team at the Virginia- Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine (VMRCVM).

“I never thought I would be involved in developing educational technology,” says Bender. “I didn’t expect to love teaching. I had all these other aspirations.” In what she thought would be a temporary move, she took an instructor positioat VMRCVM. “I got hooked really fast on teaching, especially case-based teaching,” says Bender. “I helped with labs, taught anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, histology, and pathology. It was like going back to vet school.”

Building on a Strong Foundation

The strong foundation she built at MSU, says Bender, became the basis for all the work she did later. The comprehensive DVM education prepared her for much more.

“I got a broad education and studied with some really excellent teachers. I was well prepared as a surgeon—I studied with David Merkley, Larry Booth, and Wade Brinker. And I had no idea I was going to be a clinical pathologist, but I got a really strong foundation in histology with Al Stenson, clinical pathology with Jan Krehbiel, and physiology with Jim Cunningham. Some of my fondest memories from MSU are treating zoo animals with Jim Sikarskie. The transition from normal physiology to disease is the underpinning of Diagnostic Pathfinder and my work as a pathologist. Now it all makes perfect sense. It was an exciting ride.”

Bender began her involvement with educational technologies at VMRCVM. She credits the school’s strategies for supporting and encouraging faculty members to be innovative. “We had a new provost who was charged with keeping the school ranked in the top 50 for research institutions,” says Bender. “She visited the top six research institutions to talk with them about their approach to their leadership and found that the common element was a commitment to faculty.”

As a result of the provost’s research, funding was awarded directly to faculty members in the form of seed grants vetted by a multi-disciplinary committee. Bender had a project in mind, and immediately began assembling a team.

Creating a New Tool

Bender had been teaching pathology for 16 years, and kept hitting the same wall. Students wanted to jump directly to the solution, to the conclusion, rather than following a process. She wanted to bring real-world scenarios to students in the classroom in order to teach them to think through the analytic process.

“I had the idea for a technology that would teach students the process, but I knew it required more computer programming than I could handle.”

In the design process, Bender brought together experts from a range of disciplines that included instructional design and evaluation, computer science, veterinary medical informatics, and clinical pathology. “We had some of the best in each area—we were all in the right place at the right time.” And while it hadn’t been part of the plan, Bender says it turned out that every person on the team had wanted to be a veterinarian when they were growing up.

It is only fitting that relationships and unexpected paths are at the core of the development of a tool built on team-based learning. “Cross-disciplinary interactions really help the thinking process,” says Bender. “In the ’90s we were all very siloed, but now people are crossing boundaries and sharing perspectives and the results are fantastic. You get a bunch of people in a room and miracles happen—there’s a reason that team-based learning is now a worldwide movement.”

Another key to the team’s success was the early involvement of students in the design process. “We didn’t just pull them in during a late testing phase. We were so grounded in user-centered design that now when people go through the software it is very intuitive.”

Changing Higher Education

Bender is currently working with 25 veterinary schools to beta test the veterinary section of ThinkSpace, which is a second-generation product that spun off of Diagnostic Pathfinder.

Bender’s experience with software development led to an invitation to join the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), an NSF Center for Learning and Teaching in higher education, started with six participating universities and has grown to 25. Bender says their goal is to have 100 participating universities. “Since 80 percent of PhDs are granted by 100 universities, we can reach 80 percent of PhDs. We can change higher education. We can make a real difference with ThinkSpace.”

The tool is already in use in other disciplines and in Iowa State University’s faculty development program. Bender has been invited to numerous universities across the country. “I’ve never seen this level of interest in teaching, which is fantastic. It’s important to prepare the next generation.”

Across disciplines, teaching is often overlooked in graduate programs. “We are trying to change higher education,” says Bender.

At CIRTL, Bender works on the leadership team with two MSU faculty members, Henry (Rique) Campa, III, PhD, assistant dean at MSU’s Graduate School, and professor of Wildlife Ecology, and Ann Austin, PhD, professor, and inaugural Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. “They are both fantastic,” says Bender.

Meaningful Recognition

Bender has received numerous national teaching awards and honors, but the ones that touch her heart, she says, are the student awards. Now, Bender is seeing her students and mentees earn their own teaching awards. “It’s really so great— they’re using Pathfinder and team-based learning and winning awards—that’s over the top.”

This year, for the first time in 31 years, Bender is not teaching students. She is teaching future faculty and working in faculty development. While she misses teaching professionally, she says it’s extraordinarily exciting to be part of this movement to develop teaching technologies, to see the importance of teaching being recognized.

Posted: October 2012
Contact: Casey Williamson