Get inside students’ heads, see world from their viewpoint

“The ability to get into their heads and try to see the world from their viewpoint makes me a better teacher,” says Jane Marone. Photo: Joshua Clark

2013 Silver Circle Award

Since 1966, the Silver Circle has been presented to some of UIC’s best teachers. What makes the award especially meaningful is its selection committee: the graduating seniors.

Jane Marone
Clinical associate professor of         kinesiology & nutrition
College of Applied Health Sciences

Jane Marone began her career as a physician in New Orleans, working with indigent patients.

She learned to communicate complex information about medication and health issues to people, some of them illiterate, who needed help understanding basic information about their care.

She credits this early practical experience with helping her communicate with students.

Realizing that she preferred teaching to seeing patients, Marone came to UIC as a visiting lecturer in 1995. She has taught human physiological anatomy for the past 18 years and human cadaver dissection for 14 years.

It’s important to see things from the student’s perspective, she says.

“The ability to get into their heads and try to see the world from their viewpoint makes me a better teacher.”

Her inspiration as a teacher comes from the good and the bad instructors she’s had.

“The worst teachers had quite an effect on me,” she says.

“Anyone can read a textbook, but the best teachers put the information in such a way that you can understand it and the worst teachers destroyed it and I didn’t know anything.”

Much of her teaching philosophy comes from experience. Early in her teaching career, she realized that she wasn’t reaching her students. Over time, she has developed her own methods and tutorials.

“When I teach, I try to construct something for them so they can have building blocks from beginning to end,” she says.

Marone’s research interests include biomechanics and fall risk in older adults.

She has also done pedagogical research on student learning.

Today’s students often “want answers really quick,” she says, looking for instant success instead of taking the time to deliberately study, think and analyze what they are learning.

“Simple as it is, the amount of time spent studying is really one of the most important determinants of student success,” she says.