The president of the RCPA, Dr Trish Leong (left), presents the award to Associate Professor Diane Kenwright.
Associate Professor Diane Kenwright has been awarded the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) Konrad Muller Outstanding Teaching Award for 2024.
The RCPA bestows the award on those who show a passion for teaching and whose dedication to their subject inspires their students.
Diane is the Head of the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine on the Pōneke campus and teaches pathology to undergraduate medical students in both Wellington and Dunedin.
She has worked for the University for more than 30 years, influencing many students to choose pathology as a career.
A passionate and enthusiastic teacher, she set up her own pathology cooking show on YouTube, to demonstrate how to recognise different diseases through food.
Diane says she is delighted to be recognised by her peers across Australia and New Zealand.
“It’s a real honour to receive this award. It is particularly special to have that acknowledgement come from my pathology colleagues.”
Diane has been a pioneer in online teaching, and in addition to her off beat pathology cooking show, she has more than 100 recorded lectures on her YouTube pathology channel.
She has been an enthusiastic supporter of the annual International Pathology Day since it began in 2015, creating a range of activities to attract visitors to campus, organising expert talks, games, and science experiments such as extracting DNA from strawberries.
Diane has an extensive publication record in medical education, investigating what works and what doesn’t, applying this knowledge to her own practice, and sharing it with other teachers.
Her key advice for aspiring teachers is to be enthusiastic about the subject.
“Teaching is all about preparation, but you can be the best prepared and most expert teacher and have a class full of bored, distracted students.”
She uses stories to help students remember that pathology is about people.
“I link what I do as a pathologist to the real clinical situation. It is about building pictures and frameworks in their mind, so they can see the subject better, rather than just know the facts.”
Her life mission, she says, is to strengthen the training of each new generation of doctors, improving their biomedical knowledge so they can diagnose and treat patients better.
“It is that sense of mission that keeps me going. Plus, teaching really is fun. People don’t tell you how fun it is, it’s actually really fun.”
Diane was presented with the award at the RCPA’s annual scientific meeting in Melbourne in February.
Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine
The Department is a multidisciplinary unit in which the sub disciplines of haematology, microbiology, chemical pathology, anatomical pathology and molecular pathology are represented.
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