Amy Falk, OD, associate dean of academic programs, wears many hats at MCPHS University. But this year’s commencement exercises brought special recognition for her work in the classroom. On May 6, as part of the One Hundred Forty-Ninth Commencement Ceremony, Falk was honored with the Trustees’ Award for Teaching Excellence. In her acceptance speech, Falk was typically modest, noting that “It’s a really funny feeling, being awarded for something you love to do.” Her assertion that teachers “instill in their students a self-confidence in their own abilities” exemplifies Falk’s commitment to the MCPHS optometry students who take her classes. We sat down with Falk to talk about teaching, learning, and the future of optometry. 

First off, congratulations on winning the Trustees’ Award for Teaching Excellence! Can you tell us a little bit about the biggest changes you’ve seen at MCPHS over the course of your teaching career? 

Well, I came in when the program was brand new, so I would say stability! It’s been really gratifying to see that all the constant feedback and work on making improvements has paid off, and that the team has really established an institutional presence in the field. 

When it opened, MCPHS was only the twenty-second School of Optometry in the country. What positions MCPHS apart from the other schools? 

There are two key strengths of this program: 

First, we’re set up to be truly inter-professional. Older schools tend to be standalone institutions that only offer optometry. It’s harder for them to be interdisciplinary. Here, we have many other disciplines who are willing to work with us. 

Second, our clinical program is second to none. We cherry-picked the best aspects and teaching models of all the different programs, and emulated all of our best teachers. For instance, one of the things we stress in the classroom here is the “So what / who cares?” model, to bring it back to that bottom line of patient care. When I’m teaching neuroanatomy to optometry students, it can get a little dry! You’re naming structures, and there’s a lot of memorization.  By asking “So what? Who cares?” it reminds me to tie in that clinical relevance. 

When you contemplate the field your graduates are facing, what interests you? What’s exciting about the field of optometry right now?  

In terms of areas of specialty, I’d say glaucoma care. Since I graduated, there’s been a huge explosion of glaucoma research. There’s more technology for diagnosis, more management plans—essentially, our ability to treat glaucoma patients has skyrocketed. It’s a really good time for optometrists in terms of scope and understanding. 

To your mind, what qualities and skills does a student considering optometry need to possess in order to be successful? 

They need to be good at problem solving. We’re all going to be clinicians, and that means thinking through problems. That’s actually a pretty hard skill to teach. I can teach the textbook presentation of a disease, but when you see a real patient, they’re not going to be textbook. There may be an interfering condition, or they may have an allergy to the front-line medication. You won’t diagnose head-on, and you won’t treat head-on. 

Can you tell us a little about some career teaching highlights of which you’re particularly proud? 

I’m always trying to appeal to every type of learner—from those who get the most out of reading the book, to those who need to hear the lecture, to those who are really hands-on. I talk a *lot* in class and tell a lot of stories, so those auditory learners can really grasp it. One student said in my course evaluations that my course is “like storytime.” For those who need to touch and have hands-on experience, I bring in household items that can be used as hands-on examples. For example, Kleenex® tissues make great retinas. Retinas are layered, just like 2 or 3-ply tissues, and can be peeled apart very delicately. I use Play-Doh to talk about optic nerves, and those touchable items make high-level disease and anatomy concepts accessible to students hearing them for the first time. I teach a course on glaucoma, a multifactorial, complex disease, that many practicing specialists don’t really understand. But then course evaluations come back, and my students have written “Glaucoma is so easy! I feel like a glaucoma specialist!” We get feedback from hospitals confirming that these students really know glaucoma; it’s great and a little funny to me, because there are experienced practitioners who struggle with this. 

When you look towards your future at MCPHS, what excites you? 

Our national reputation is growing; at first, people didn’t know we were here. But within the past five years, that has been shifting; people have heard good things about us. That inaugural class going out across the country and getting jobs were our ambassadors, and they are good—so we’re becoming known for producing strong optometrists.