Micah Beachy, D.O., is among three UNMC faculty members who will receive Outstanding Teacher Awards at the April 23 faculty meeting.
- Name: Micah Beachy, D.O.
- Titles: Assistant professor of internal medicine
- Joined UNMC: July 2008
- Hometown: Hutchinson, Kan.
Chancellor to speak
UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., will give his annual address to the faculty at 4 p.m. on April 23 in the Durham Research Center Auditorium as part of the annual faculty meeting. Faculty Senate President Gay Canaris, M.D., assistant professor, internal medicine, College of Medicine, will provide an overview of the year’s activities. Following the address and the award presentations, Dr. Gold will host a reception in the center’s foyer.
Awards will be presented for Outstanding Teacher, Spirit of Community Service, Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Graduate Students and Outstanding Mentor of Junior Faculty, as well as the University of Nebraska’s Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award (OTICA) and Outstanding Research and Creative Activity (ORCA) Award. Faculty members also will be recognized for their 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 years of service.
What are the greatest rewards of teaching?
To me, the greatest reward of teaching is the moment when a student or resident gets the concept that you’re trying to educate them on. That “ah ha” moment is what you aim for as an educator.
Describe a moment in your career when you realized you had picked the right occupation.
Since high school, I’ve always felt that teaching was going to be part of my career. When I decided to pursue medicine, I shifted my education focus to educating patients about their health issues. Now as a clinician-educator, I not only get to educate my patients about their disease processes, I also get to help educate future physicians. Both of these educational roles are challenging yet rewarding and help solidify that I’m in the right occupation.
What are the biggest challenges you face as a teacher?
As a clinician-educator, the biggest challenge is balancing the resident patient load, clinics, duty hours and work-life balance while still ensuring they leave residency confident and competent to care for their patients.
How do you know when you’ve been successful as a teacher?
For me, success as an educator occurs when you see the proper application of a concept you helped a learner grasp. It’s also exceptionally rewarding to see a former student or resident pass along that same knowledge to a fellow student or resident.