Videos from the 10-speaker lineup at TEDx University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) are now available to view on YouTube.

UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, was among the speakers at the Nov. 9 event, which had “Improving the Human Condition” as its theme and was held at the SMC Campus Center.

To see the videos, go to this TEDx UMB webpage and click on each speaker’s “Watch on YouTube” link.

To read about the event, go to this UMB News page.

To see a photo gallery, go to this UMB Facebook page.

Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD, MA, MDE, BCPS, CPE, program director of the School of Pharmacy’s Master of Science and Graduate Certificates in Palliative Care, jokes that she sometimes feels superfluous in her role because of one person: Erika Pixley, MBA.

“Everyone calls Erika,” McPherson says of Pixley, senior academic program specialist. “In fact, when someone calls in, both of our lines ring on both of our phones. I’ll answer it and say, ‘Lynn McPherson.’ And someone will say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, is Erika there?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, this is Dr. McPherson, can I help you?’ And they say, ‘No, I really need to speak to Erika.’

“She’s indispensable to this program. She’s the glue.”

Helping to manage the program since its inception in spring 2017, Pixley was rewarded for her efforts Dec. 7 with the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) Employee of the Month Award for December. UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, presented Pixley with the award at the Saratoga Building, praising her professionalism, work ethic, and ability to meet the needs of students.

“Your colleagues have said a lot of great things about you,” said Perman, who gave Pixley a plaque, a letter of commendation, and news that an extra $250 would be in her next paycheck. “You’ve helped to build up a whole new program and you serve the students exceptionally well. This award is well-deserved, and on behalf of the University, I want you to know that your work is very much appreciated.”

The online program, which is open to other UMB disciplines such as medicine and nursing, is designed to meet the educational needs of those who already work or wish to work in hospice or palliative care environments and want to gain deeper understanding of the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social needs of patients and families involved in end-of-life care.

McPherson describes the program as “a university within a university” and says of Pixley: “Erika is the welcoming committee and the admissions committee and the student affairs committee and the graduation committee. She’s everything. And people adore her.

“She is extraordinarily professional in all her dealings — with faculty, students in the program, pharmacy students, and any other interested parties. She helps the students apply, enroll, develop their plan of study, pay their tuition, resolve technology issues, request graduate certificates, and does many, many more tasks.”

Pixley, an employee of the school’s Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science who came to UMB in 2016 to help launch the palliative care program, takes great pride in its success, with the first cohort set to graduate next spring.

“I’m with the students from Day 1 through graduation,” she says. “We are not even 2 years old yet and we have over 150 students, so I think that’s pretty successful. And we have great retention, because everyone who has started in the program is on their way to completion.”

Pixley says she learned more in the first few months in this role than in seven years in her previous jobs in education enrollment and admissions, adding that she appreciates the creative freedom she’s given with tasks such as managing social media, producing the program’s newsletter, and assisting with marketing materials.

“I’ve been given the flexibility to utilize my own resources and the freedom to try different things,” she says. “If I have an idea that will aid students or the program, I can actually go to somebody with the idea, instead of just sitting in my cubicle.”

Pixley collaborates with faculty, too, of course, but says the best part of her job is being in constant contact with the students.

“In previous positions I’ve held, students are handed off to other departments after their initial enrollment has ended,” she says. “Here, I like that I’m our students’ main go-to person and that they know they’re with me from beginning to end, through thick and thin. They know I have their backs, that I’ll handle all issues or changes that arise, and that they can come to me with any type of question.

“Our students feel comfortable with me, and many of them have said the students in this program and the support staff feel like a family. I’m very proud of that.”

And McPherson is clearly proud of Pixley.

“Erika is an asset and friend to our program, the School of Pharmacy, and UMB,” she says. “The program is an enormous success, and we cannot imagine that it would have been doing as well under anyone else’s care.”

— Lou Cortina

Philip A. Mackowiak, MD ’70, MBA, is more medical historian than art aficionado, but in researching and writing his latest book, Patients As Art: Forty Thousand Years of Medical History in Drawings, Paintings, and Sculptures, he learned a few things along the way.

“Before doing this book, I couldn’t even spell the word ‘art’ — but now I’m an expert, thanks to the internet,” Mackowiak joked before launching a presentation about his new book to a crowd of 60 that included members of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) community and his family and friends on Dec. 4 at Davidge Hall.

Mackowiak, professor emeritus of medicine and the Carolyn Frenkil and Selvin Passen History of Medicine Scholar at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), delivered background and insight on the book during his half-hour lecture, which was sponsored by the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture. He displayed slides of 10 of the 160 pieces he analyzed from a medical and scientific perspective, ranging from Rembrandt’s famed The Raising of Lazarus to a watercolor titled Pollution, painted by a Canadian artist named Catherine Hennessey.

The watercolor, in fact, is featured on the cover of the book, which spans 244 pages and 10 chapters relating to medical subjects such as nutrition, surgery, mental health, genetics, and death and dying. Pollution is included in the chapter on public health. In the book, Mackowiak describes it, writing, “Hennessey’s image is arresting, shocking, yet strangely beautiful, like the vibrant colors of a sunset viewed through sickening urban smog.” (See photo, above)

“This artist has done a number of really captivating watercolors, but this is the opus magnum,” Mackowiak told the crowd, adding that he was so taken with the painting that he bought it from Hennessey.

Mackowiak continued the lecture with more art analyses and medical diagnoses, including:

• The Dissection of a Cadaver, 15th century: Mackowiak noted that the procedure illustrated probably wasn’t a dissection at all, because a close inspection shows that three of the men standing over the body seem to be holding him down, an insight first noted by his former UMSOM colleague Frank M. Calia, MD, MACP. “And you see a fellow on the far right of the painting who’s holding something in his hand. So based on Dr. Calia’s observations and doing another consideration of the painting, I suggest that this is not the dissection of a cadaver. In fact, it’s a lithotomy — the removal of a bladder stone, and that stone is being held by the person at the far right.”

• The Beggars, 1568: This painting depicts beggars with missing legs, but Mackowiak surmises that there was no medical reason for amputation. Studying the expressions on their faces led him to believe they were mentally retarded. “There was no disorder at that time that could have destroyed the lower legs in a symmetrical fashion without killing them,” he said. “So I suggest these were strategic amputations done by the family to make these poor souls more pitiable and therefore more effective as beggars. That sounds bizarre, and it’s hard to believe. But I saw exactly this same thing in Bangladesh when I was there as a medical student at this institution.”

• Battle of Issus, 100 B.C.: From this mosaic, Mackowiak blew up an inset of Alexander the Great and takes a keen focus on Alexander’s eyes, which seem to show concern rather than confidence. “Does that look like an all-conquering warrior?” Mackowiak said. “To my way of thinking, it looks like a warrior who wonders, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ The artist who produced this might well have realized the existence not only of post-traumatic stress disorder in the common soldier, but also that this sort of thing can happen to commanders, too.”

Mackowiak’s presentation clearly showed his expertise as one of the most accomplished medical historians in the country, and Patients As Art follows his first two books, Post Mortem: Solving History’s Great Medical Mysteries, and Diagnosing Giants: Solving the Medical Mysteries of Thirteen Patients Who Changed the World.  

Since the mid-1990s, he and the University of Maryland Medical Alumni Association have organized the Historical Clinicopathological Conference, which has examined the illnesses or deaths of figures such as Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Christopher Columbus, Beethoven, and Mozart. The 2007 conference, for instance, determined that President Lincoln would have survived an assassin’s bullet if the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center existed in 1865. The 26th conference will be held in May 2019. 

Larry Pitrof, the alumni association’s executive director, noted that when Mackowiak talked about retiring five years ago, two benefactors — Carolyn Frenkil and Selvin Passen, MD — stepped up to fund the doctor’s endowed scholar position. Pitrof thanked Frenkil, who was in attendance, for her support, as well as the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture for its sponsorship of the lecture.

“We’re celebrating an awful lot of history on the UMB campus right now,” Pitrof said, “and it’s our belief that programs like this truly separate the great institutions from the good ones.”

— Lou Cortina

Learn more about the book.