The Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics is now being run by Sana Loue Ph. D. JD, Acting Director, Division of Epidemiology - who had me suspended last Fall after I went to the Dean of the Graduate School about a 'C' grade in her Epidemiology & Law Ethics class - a class that Dr. Loue conducted over 2 weekends in a very bizarre fashion in 2005.
I was in retrospect a THREAT to her becoming the Acting Director of the Department - so I couldn't challenge her grade in a public 'grieve the grade' way or she'd lose out (I was suspended before any discussion of the issues or before I could fill out the papers to challenge the grade; without due process)? There were inappropriate and very 'narrow' comments about everything from drug addiction and drug trials to Utilization Review Committees at Case Western/University Hospitals of Cleveland - where some unusual studies have been approved in the past with little thought about causing patient injury. There needed to be some revision/updating in how she conducts this 'ethics' class: the content, the time element (not even the required hours of 'class' as the Dean admitted), and the UNEXPLAINED 'personal' grading for projects/papers that she spends literally not one minute discussing with you - you can't learn anything from her. And she's now in charge of the Department of Epidemiology?
I was an MD/Masters student in the Department of Biostatistics since 2004 - who took her class as an elective. Dr. Loue writes a library of useless epidemiology books, all with a 'gender' problem sidebar (lesbian ethics, minority men who have sex with men, diversity issues in mood disorders, etc), and has no math/statistics in her classes/books. Her Encyclopedia of Women's Health is literally useless in any real 'normal' medical sense - not a book that I'd open for any problem for any patient.
She lied about me, to me, and had me recommended for psychiatric 'evaluation, ' just to see what they'd find per Peter Poulos JD, instead of having a discussion as to why she gave me a 'C' - when I presented work that I had done with another Case Western Faculty Member - Dr. Michael Lederman - work that got published in Nature Reviews in 2006 about the use of microbicides for HIV. She graded even CWRU work as 'C' just because I presented it (don't have gender conflicts), and I had presented it to Dr. Lederman? She's done this to other professional (ie MD) students who challenge/disagree with her ideas, etc.
She's got no ability to run an ethics class, let alone be the Acting Direct of a Department, and needs to straighten out mine, and a number of other student 'conflicts' regarding her grading and class assessments - so that we can finish what we started or get our transcripts to finish elsewhere. She gives Cs, Ds, and a Fs to students when they disagree with her about even 'housekeeping' issues, ie grades, discussion points, interpretations of her books, movie viewings wasting class time. It isn't that her class is 'hard, ' it's that the class was miserably run and disturbing in what she says - and you take it for the legal research ethics part, consent form writing, etc - none of which gets discussed in a way you can use on the job.
For instance one whole day of the two weekend class I attended in 2005 was spent viewing and discussing the movie 'Requiem for a Dream' - one of the most disturbing/effective films about the experience of drug addiction ever made (heroin). Cost = over $100/hour for class credit that day. But the course wasn't supposed to be about drug addiction or movie reviewing/film study, ie where every character was as doomed as my grade - it was about running drug trials supposedly and doing things ethically in patient research - at Clinics, University Hospitals and Drug Companies. And this wasn't/isn't medical epidemiology ethics for the professional who wants to do cancer epidemiology - why I was at Case Western Reserve (CWRU) Graduate School of Epidemiology & Biostatistics - the aim/goal/purpose that I wrote about on the admissions documents.
And her presentation in class, with part of her head shaved and dyed different colors, is a 'dress for success' presentation that no student can imitate and get accepted to the program with - you have to dress black-and-white and present yourself traditionally groomed. Academics seems to be all about amazon.com publications - even when the books are literally useless, hard to read/follow, extremely narrowly specialized, over-priced, and all about HIV, gender issues, and 'community advocacy' for the most part. But, despite the publications, her ethics class was run for a much lower level graduate student than an MD, much lower level student than her books target - at least in 2005.
The Cleveland Clinic has physicians trying to take this Epidemiology & Biostatistics Masters at Case Western Reserve University - because Case Western is the only place in town for this - but what you learn isn't useful in the job market or on the wards. And when you object, your life, degree track, and reputation is ruined. However, students who can talk about pregnant, drug-addicted, HIV-infected Hispanic women with mental illness, and laud Dr. Loue's projects and niche interests, can do well and are encouraged to apply. But for the straighter more traditional student, your loan is cancelled and you have to deal with the lawyers at Case Western (Peter Poulos who doesn't/can't answer a simple question for months or call the lawyer back, but likes to order 'evaluations' for unindicated reasons, ie to find out about your personal life and change the issue from Dr. Loue). Basically, your life is/will be made a literal mess because you disagreed with Dr. Sana Loue who has no common sense, business sense, or sense of where epidemiology in medicine is headed.
The Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics is asked to expeditiously resolve my grade disagreement (explain the 'C' in a professional way for the transcript, ie she hated my paper, disagreed, etc) and the loan problems - which have continued for most of a year now (since October). They cancelled the loan and Sallie Mae allows that this situation is unfortunate, but covered by the loan, ie starting and stopping a degree program for a grade disagreement problem, department focus clash, ie as CWRU is almost a unifocus HIV/AIDS/TB department and Cancer Epidemiology (or even general Infectious Disease Epidemiology), even with Ireland Cancer Center, gets little class time. The grade is still UNEXPLAINED, and there was no way to say the things that Dr. Loue wanted me to say in any paper - this is personal - that I don't agree with her 'take' on things from using explicit drug movies to interpreting a drug trial along the lines of who the principal woman investigator supposedly slept with (one paragraph of The Drug Trial book).
MD students seeking advanced degrees in Epidemiology & Biostatistics are advised NOT to try Case Western Reserve's program while Dr. Loue is the Acting Director unless you want your degree track minefielded and professional time wasted for her political ambitions.
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