Students interested in things like cutting and dissecting do not need to look any further than the University’s kinesiology department.
In a collaborative effort, the LSU Kinesiology Department, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine and the LSU Medical and Dental Schools created a special topics class called KIN 1999 in spring of 2007. The course KIN 4501 is a dissection lab that allows students to work with the cadavers.
Official names have not yet been designated to the courses because they are new to the University and are under development.
The classes use LSU Veterinary School facilities and cadavers provided by the LSU Medical School.
Melissa Thompson, kinesiology instructor, said KIN 1999 students have a list of structures they have to find on the body.
“They don’t cut anything they just look and identify,” Thompson said.
The class is open to undergraduate students. The dissection course is for graduate students and seniors.
Thompson said students receive a fresh body with the skin intact and perform all cutting, dissecting and separating, which means identifying all tissues in the body.
“I think that this experience gives students who take it such an advantage when they take their medical gross anatomy course,” Thompson said. “If you’ve never done it before it’s going to take you a while to figure out what’s what. But if you’ve seen some of this before, even though no body is the same, at least you know what you are looking at, and that’s what these classes offer.”
Kara Spinks, kinesiology junior, took KIN 1999 in the spring.
“I feel like the lab has been the most advantageous class I have taken so far,” Spinks said. “Every aspect of it was applicable to my learning and preparation for future schooling.”
Spinks said she plans on attending either physical therapy school or medical school to become a pediatric therapist or pediatrician.
“I think this early opportunity in the dissection lab has me more prepared than the average student entering graduate school,” Spinks said. “You learn way more with the hands-on experience than you could ever learn from pictures in a book.”The spring course was filled to capacity with 40 students, and the dissection lab offered this summer accommodated 10-15 students with cadaver-based training.
Hargroder said the rotation for future classes will offer the undergraduate course in the fall and spring semesters, and the dissection class will be offered in the summer for graduate students.
Hargroder said students must make an A or B in the lecture class to take the KIN 1999 course. She also said graduate students and seniors who do well in that course or made an A in the lecture will then move on to the dissection lab.
Kinesiology professor Dennis Landin said teachers select students and students cannot register on their own for these classes.
“It’s almost like an application process,” Hargroder said.
—Contact Stacy Coco at [email protected]