| Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 162
| Pre-med Advisor @Davidson
I found this article on the Davidson site- it goes back a couple of years but thought it was worth posting -
Paul B. Freeland Professorship: Jeremiah L. Putnam, Professor of Biology
Davidson’s sterling reputation for student admission to medical school is being carefully nurtured by Jeremiah L. Putnam, its newly named Paul B. Freeland Professor of Biology. In the twelve years Putnam has served as the college’s premedical advisor, he has worked diligently to enhance the college’s reputation in health care circles, and to make sure students are prepared to make the best possible impression on graduate admission officials.
He made personal visits to many medical schools to find out more about their programs, has hosted med school recruiters on the Davidson campus, and become an active member of the health care advisors’ professional group -- the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions. So active, in fact, that he was elected incoming president of the group, which comprises advisers, admissions officials at health care graduate schools, and practicing health care professionals.
He is serving as president-elect from 2004-2006, president for 2006-2008, and past-president from 2008-2010.
Davidson has been tops in undergraduate preparation of future M.D.’s for decades. For the past ten years, under Putnam’s leadership, the college has enjoyed an exceptionally high rate of acceptance of its students into medical schools. While there are just 16,000 slots in the nation’s 126 medical schools per year for an average of 33,000 applicants, Davidson students are accepted at a rate of ninety to one-hundred percent.
That’s due in large part to Putnam’s expertise. He can provides students with broad counseling about career tracks. But he can also answers their specific questions, such as how significantly the University of Chicago considers test scores, and how heavily Harvard Medical School weighs medical internships. If students haven’t heard back from a school where they’ve applied, Putnam can contact the dean there with first name familiarity and find out why.
His NAAHP presidency will involve a lot of traveling, but the miles represent to Putnam invaluable opportunities to meet people who are valuable to Davidson students. “Med schools all have different characteristics, and if you are aware of their different emphases and needs, you can be much more effective in placing students,” he said.
While some students claim that “Dr. Putnam got me into medical school,” he knows better. “Most Davidson students will get into medical school if they work hard at it,” Putnam said. “My job is to make sure their decision is well considered, and that they stay on track toward their goal.”
He emphasizes that students should begin planning for medical school as early as their first year on campus. That’s not so that they can pad their resumes. He wants them to enjoy the full range of Davidson’s liberal arts educational opportunities. He encourages students to study social science, philosophy, and the arts, and to spend a semester or more abroad. For the past six years he himself has led a group of students studying human disease for summer internships at a hospital in Kikuyu, Kenya.
Though he earned his academic degrees in zoology and has conducted extensive research on the anatomy of the heart, Putnam became known as “The Sage” at Davidson through the breadth of his knowledge. Teaching here has allowed him to cultivate his literary and philosophical tendencies. He team-taught a course in “Victorian Literature and Science,” in which he covered Darwin, and co-wrote a paper on “Lord Jim’s Death in Light of Evolutionary Theories.”
He developed new courses in “History of Biology” and neuroanatomy, established electron microscopy here, refurbished the Porter museum of scientific specimens, and established studies in human anatomy at the Bowman-Gray School of Medicine. Explaining the breadth of his interests, he said, “I’m inclined to live the contemplative life. I’m one who enjoys meaning of knowledge more than its practical application.”
Student through the years have loved his quirky, witty, warm approach to teaching and learning. In 1980-81 they selected him as the second-ever winner of the ODK Teaching Award. Putnam also won the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 1993, its second year.
One of his early students wrote, “He truly taught not only about science, but about life.”
His experience at Davidson and the new opportunity to develop it further with the NAAHP leave Putnam with sense of wonder and gratitude. You see, he came to Davidson in 1973 feeling a little inadequate. “I come from humble stock,” he said, as he began recalling his family genealogy back to sixteenth century Netherlands.
His forebears traveled south to Putnam’s home state of Texas in 1870. His great-great grandfather drove cattle on the Chisholm Trail, his grandfather was a trolley mechanic, and his father was a bus driver. Luckily for Putnam and his older brother, their mother and father were determined that the boys would get a college education.
Putnam graduated from high school, spent three years in the Navy and enrolled at Texas A&M at age twenty-two. During the whole nine years he spent at A&M earning his B.A., master’s, and Ph.D. degrees, Putnam worked as a lab technician and teaching assistant.
He taught first at Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts from 1970 to 1973, then felt lucky to emerge as the winner of Davidson’s search for a comparative anatomy professor in 1973.
Putnam is being relieved of one course from his teaching load during his tenure of NAAHP work, but he’s really not eager to let that go. “My problem is I like what I’m doing and don’t want to drop anything.” he said. “I love to be in the classroom, to kid around with kids and get them buzzing.”
He believes that the opportunity to lead the NAAHP will in some ways complete his personality. With characteristic humor and gusto, he quipped, “The teaching side of Jerry is taken care of with my faculty status, and the counseling side is taken care of through the pre-med program. Now the big question is, ‘Can Jerry lead?’ I guess we’re about to find that out!”
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