On a cold and windy December morning, students slowly file into Bridgewater College’s anatomy and physiology laboratory in the McKinney Center for Science and Mathematics and take in their surroundings: skulls, a variety of anatomical models and, in the back of the room, two body bags on dissection tables. But these are not BC students preparing for class—they are students in an anatomy class at Stuarts Draft High School, located 30 minutes south of Bridgewater. Once everyone has settled in and found their seat, Professor of Biology Dr. Gavin Lawson welcomes the students and walks through the worksheet they will complete during their visit, the highlight of which involves hands-on examinations two cadavers.
“Don’t take it personally if [the cadavers] don’t wave at you or say hello. It’s not that they don’t like you—they’re just dead,” Lawson says. The students chuckle.
Lawson has been hosting local high school students for anatomy lab tours since 1999. He credits BC’s former Head Women’s Basketball Coach Jean Willi ’80 with providing the original impetus for these tours.
“Jean had a friend who taught in the area and was looking for a lab that would allow students to come and look around, so Jean suggested that they contact me. Word spread quickly after that, and I began hearing from other teachers too. I’ve even had students from as far away as Petersburg [W. Va.] come to visit,” Lawson says.
Following the welcome speech, Lawson leads the students to the back of the room and introduces them to the cadavers. Both have been almost completely dissected, with the skin removed and muscles separated so that students can closely examine how the parts of the body work together. He explains that the cadavers were provided by the Virginia State Anatomical Program, a program run by the Virginia Department of Health that allows Virginians to donate their bodies for the advancement of medical science. And then the students begin.
While some students wander among the various anatomical models and attempt to identify different areas of the heart, brain, skull and gastrointestinal tract, many others don gloves to inspect the cadavers. They press at organs, manipulate muscles and tendons and gently pass around a heart. Stuarts Draft High School Science Teacher Martha Mikell says that, over the almost two decades that she has been bringing her classes to Bridgewater, this is one of the few times that everyone has gone up to the cadavers.
“There’s a huge difference between seeing something like this in person versus in a picture in a textbook,” Mikell says. “Even for the anatomical models, students are getting to see things in a level of detail that they otherwise couldn’t in high school.”
One student, a Stuarts Draft High School senior named Taylor, concurs: “You don’t see dead bodies every day.” She and a fellow classmate rattle off the dissections they have done in class this year, which includes a heart, brain, eye and a pregnant rat. Both were looking forward to learning more about anatomy during their trip to BC, and Taylor also mentions wanting to eventually work in the healthcare field. However, Taylor has taken a particular liking to radiology because it will allow her to see inside the human body without performing a dissection.
As Mikell readies the group to head back to Stuarts Draft, she asks how many students, like Taylor, want to work in a health profession. About half raise their hands. Lawson chimes in to say that as the advisor for Bridgewater’s pre-health programs, he is here to help students take the right courses and get the right practical experience needed to stand out when applying to medical, veterinary or pharmacy schools. And, since the students have now seen what they can do at BC, he hopes they will check out Bridgewater’s online pre-health advising guides and consider attending.
“I’ve had a number of high school students attend these lab tours and then come to Bridgewater,” Lawson says. “Some have gone on to become teachers themselves in schools like Buffalo Gap High School [in Swoope, Va.] and Kettle Run High School [in Nokesville, Va.), and now they bring their own students here.”
– Eli Quay ’20
2/17/25
