Awarded to the Surgical Resident whose Clinical Instruction of Medical Students Most Nearly Approaches the Standard of Excellence Set by Surgery’s Master Educator, Leonard D. Miller.
Leonard Miller graduated from Yale University and the Penn Medical School. After internship and a year of surgical residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he served from 1957 to 1959 as a captain in the U.S. Air Force and as Chief of the surgical Service and commander of a large Air Force hospital in England. After returning to the University of Pennsylvania and completing his surgical residency in 1964, he was appointed to the faculty and becoming a full professor five years later.
During his entire professional life, Len's greatest commitment was to education. As he began his faculty career, he set forth his professional goals in a career development grant application, which is preserved in the archives of the Department of Surgery. It could have served as his epitaph. He wrote, "I hope the coming years will bear evidence of the realization of some, if not all, of my fundamental aims. The three cornerstones upon which Penn's Medical School was built listed in their order of importance are: teaching, research and the care of patients. I am intent upon devoting myself primarily to teaching and research. Teaching is the aspect of medicine that satisfies me most fully. However, I am unwilling to give up the care of surgical patients because a surgeon cannot adequately teach completely from the printed page. My first experience with teaching came in 1951. I took a position with an inter-denominational church group called the East Harlem Protestant Parish. East Harlem is a remarkable overcrowded slum-infested area of New York City which has the highest tuberculosis and narcotics addiction rate of any neighborhood in the country. There, I worked, lived with teenagers and taught informal sessions in the Natural Sciences…. I had several other duties including getting the children out of the city into summer camps. My own purposes were humanistic rather than evangelical, but the experience left a deep impression on me. Small steps forward with these youngsters were large triumphs to me".
One can easily imagine what Len must have meant to the teenagers in East Harlem. Although HUP and Penn's Medical School are quite different venues, his style as a teacher never changed much. His approach was in fact almost evangelical. After finishing his tour as department chairman, Len took on the responsibility as chief of the teaching service. For the next 14 years he closely supervised the patients on this "ward" service by attending all the residents' operations including those at night and on the weekends. Students and residents schemed to be on his teaching service, in his quiz sections and his other classes. Like the Harlem teenagers their small steps forward were viewed as major triumphs for Len. They recognized him with many awards: a Lindback Award; an honorary faculty membership in the AOA; designation as the best clinical teacher by the medical school classes of 1992, 1993 and 1996; and by the surgical residents five times as their best teacher of the year. His national recognition as an educator was confirmed by his appointment as Chair of the Surgical Education Committee of the Society of University Surgeons. Len truly accomplished the goals as a teacher he had set for himself in 1964.
During his 33 years as a faculty member Len assumed many important administrative roles. He served as Chair of the Medical Board of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He also chaired the Steering Committee of the Medical Faculty Senate, and the Admissions Committee of the School of Medicine. He was Director of the Shock and Trauma Unit from 1967 to 1972. He was the J. William White Professor of Surgical Research from 1970 to 1978. After several years as Acting Chairman of the Department of Surgery, he succeeded William T. Fitts, Jr. as John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery in 1978, and served in this role until 1983.
During his early career, Len was productive in basic research. From 1972 to 1983 he was Director of the Harrison Department of Surgical Research. His research contributions, which led to more than 100 publications, were significant in several different areas, which included circulation of the kidney, the reninangiotensin system, and the impact of shock on oxygen transport and mitochondrial function. His major clinical research interests were cancer of the large bowel, portal hypertension, and the use of portacaval shunts.
Len was elected to membership in many distinguished medical and scientific societies including the American Physiological Society, the Society of University Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the Surgical Biology Club I and the Halsted Society. For many years, he was a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Surgery. He also edited with its HUP residents Ed Savage and Steve Fishman a book on the essentials of basic science in surgery.
For more than forty years Len Miller was an important force at the University of Pennsylvania and especially in its Department of Surgery. Even as a resident he was recognized by medical students and junior residents as an outstanding teacher. Later his teaching skills would become almost legendary. He was more broadly knowledgeable about surgery than anyone can remember and he was eager and effective in sharing this knowledge.
But more so than his professional accomplishments and contributions to his school and department it was Len's personal qualities which endeared him to his students and colleagues.
Over the last decade of his life and particularly in his last illness he exhibited great courage and resilience. This was apparent first in his return to an active role in the department after the disappointment of being forced by his health to give up the chairmanship he had achieved through so much hard work and personal success. After this teaching became his mission and almost totally occupied his waking hours. It was a tragic irony that his terminal illness robbed him of his ability to speak and thus his lifelong passion, teaching. He confronted his final illness with a stubbornness and apparent good cheer that should serve as a lesson to everyone.