Winter Study 2020

When I return here to teach winter study, I feel that excitement when awakening each morning to go to class (but this time refreshed from not having stayed up so late)!  The students are my teachers, challenging and enhancing my ideas with their insights and questions. I feel their optimism as well as their concerns. They appreciate the bubble of the purple valley and also recognize the privilege and responsibilities of the opportunity they have been given. They impress me by their goals to give back, care, be grateful, and continue questioning, exploring, and embracing their future challenges and opportunities.

I am thrilled to be in Williamstown for the month of January as an adjunct professor teaching a Winter Study course on Ethical Issues in Surgical Care. I conceived the course as a discussion of case studies that I put together to examine the many challenging situations that surgeons encounter from an ethical perspective. The main topics include surgical professionalism, the surgeon-patient relationship, conflicts of interest, substitute decision making, end-of-life issues, confidentiality, and ethics of access. For each of these, I prepared between 5 and 10 case studies that we dissect in detail in class. We will read and discuss Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal. I also structured this as an intensive writing course and each student will prepare four papers during the month reflecting on many of the ethical issues raised in the case studies. I edit these very carefully and meet with the students to discuss my comments and suggestions.

I have a phenomenal group of fourteen pre-med students in the class, quite evenly divided from first-years to seniors, with an equal number of men and women. I also have some students and Williamstown residents who are auditing the classes. The students have wide-ranging interests – many are on varsity teams, three play in the Berkshire Symphony, and all seem to be very intent on medical school after a 1-2 year break for research, clinical experiences, etc.

The range of topics explored in the papers has been impressive, including the influence of big pharma on physicians, concurrent and ghost surgeries, informed consent issues, the ethical obligation of hospitals to provide physician health programs to combat physician burnout, obligation to disclose genetic testing results, ethical conflicts in reporting abuse, and mandatory vaccination laws to name a few. Many of the papers have been truly exceptional.

It is really gratifying to see so many of our classmates sharing their time and expertise as adjunct Winter Study professors. It is a priceless gift that we are passing on to this generation of incredible Williams students.

I have 30 students in my venture capital class, eleven of whom are on the men’s hockey team. I am uncertain as to whether that team concentration is a reflection of the entrepreneurial spirit of hockey players or a collective judgment as to the rigor of the course. Once I first proposed the course four years ago, I thought I would have many aspiring lawyers as I had taught a version of the course in law school as an adjunct professor. This year I do not have any students who have indicated that law school is in their future. To a person, the students want to start businesses, join early stage companies or be venture capital investors.

The highlight of the course, I believe, is the various guests that participate in class discussions and then meet with students to address whatever topics are of interest to the students or the guest. Two of our entrepreneur guests (and Williams alums) were Mark Wallace, the founder of Parlor Skis, which sells custom made skis, and Mary Imevbore, the winner of the Williams business plan competition in 2018, whose company sells wigs and hair extensions online primarily to Afro-American women. Mark also happens to be Dave Olson’s son-in-law.

David Olson and I had the pleasure of returning to Williamstown in January to teach mock trial. Our course consisted of eight 3-hour sessions divided up as follows: one lecture, five classes designed to help the students prepare for two trials; and the two final trials. We divided our 11 students up into two teams and each would present cases  for both the plaintiff and defendant switching sides in the same case in our final 2 sessions . This year’s exciting case focused on untimely demise of Mr. Gilbertson while trying to scale Mt. Everest. We were ably assisted by Judges Rodney Brown, whose 40 years trying cases made him ideally suited to the bench, and Bob Schwed, whose 40 years of making deals, made him an adventure on the bench for our fledgling lawyers.