The Division of Nephrology congratulates Timothy Yau, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, the recipient of a Teacher of the Year Award, as voted on by the 2021 graduating class of WashU medical students. The class selected two Teachers of the Year, one for their pre-clinical training in their first two years and one for their clinical training in their final two years of study. Dr. Yau won the award for Pre-clinical Teacher of the Year. Gerome Escota, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Infection Diseases, won the award for Clinical Teacher of the Year. The awards were presented at the School of Medicine’s commencement ceremony.
In addition, the Division congratulates Steven Cheng, MD, Professor of Medicine, who was voted Pre-Clinical Teacher of the Year for 2020, although last year’s ceremony was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. Dr. Cheng was also recently honored by the internal medicine residents, who voted him the 2021 Nephrology Teacher of the Year.
Both Yau and Cheng are respected and valued teachers at WashU. Each has received multiple awards for their exemplary skills in medical education. Yau has received seven Distinguished Service Teaching Awards since joining the faculty in 2011. Cheng received the Distinguished Service Teaching Award for Course Director of the Year in 2018, the Distinguished Professor of the Year Award in 2017, and the Course Master of the Year in 2015. Both have been recipients of the Samuel R. Goldstein Leadership Award for Medical Student Education, one of the highest honors that teachers in the School of Medicine can achieve.
Always striving to improve the quality of medical education, in 2019 Yau and Cheng joined WashU School of Medicine’s Phase 1 Integrated Curriculum Design team that was tasked with the development of a new curriculum for the entering class of medical students in 2020. The team used the science of learning to completely re-imagine the medical school curriculum. It had been 20 years since the last curriculum renewal.
Follow Dr. Timothy Yau @Maximal_Change, Dr. Steven Cheng @RenalRhapsody, @WUSTLmed and @WUNephrology on Twitter.