Features
Educating Future Leaders
After
completing medical school and a residency in ophthalmology, J.P. Dunn knew his
education was not yet complete. “I’d received clinical training but not academic
training,” says Dr. Dunn. “I had always wanted to be in academic medicine but I
didn’t understand what it entailed.”
In 1988, Dr. Dunn entered the Jules
stein eye institute for a fellowship in cornea and external ocular diseases.
Through the program, fellows pursue independent research while enhancing their
skills in providing outpatient, inpatient and surgical care, and instructing
medical school students and residents. The Institute offers fellowships in
nine specialty areas: comprehensive ophthalmology, contact lens practice, cornea
and external ocular diseases and refractive surgery, glaucoma,
neuroophthalmology, ophthalmic pathology, orbital and ophthalmic plastic
surgery, pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus, and vitreoretinal diseases and
surgery.

(An international fellowship training Program provides similar
opportunities for ophthalmologists from throughout the globe. since its
inception, the international fellowship training Program has attracted
participants from 23 nations.) Fellowship programs are an integral part of the
Jules stein eye institute’s education mission. “Our three main goals of
research, patient care and education are synergistic,” says Dr. Bradley R.
Straatsma, the Institute’s founding director and now a professor emeritus. “This
institution could not function without all three.”
For Dr. Dunn, the
fellowship provided invaluable training and unprecedented opportunity. “I
learned so much about so many different aspects, not just about corneal disease,
but about how to deal with patients and residents; how to teach; how to write
papers,” he says. “i had fantastic role models who clearly enjoyed what they
did, whether it was teaching, performing surgery or seeing patients. it was my
?rst introduction to academic medicine in ophthalmology, and it was exactly what
i’d hoped it would be.”
Dr. Dunn wrote his first academic
paper during his fellowship, about infection associated with contact lens wear,
under the guidance of Drs. Bartly J. Mondino, the current director of Jules
stein, and Dr. Barry Weissman. “It was accepted with no revisions—the ?rst and
possibly only time that’s happened for me,” he says. Dr. Dunn also co-authored
papers with Professor of ophthalmology Dr. Gary holland on HIV-related eye
disease. Thanks to a referral from Dr. holland, Dr. Dunn went from UCLA to a
fellowship in uveitis and corneal disease at the Francis I. Proctor foundation
at UC San Francisco. He became a clinical instructor there before moving to
Johns Hopkins University and the Wilmer Eye Institute, where he now is an
associate professor of ophthalmology and director of residency education. “There
are so many aspects of the Jules stein fellowship that have helped me in my
professional life,” says Dr. Dunn. “Where I’ve gotten in academics is due to
uCLA more than to any other institution.” —Nancy Sokoler Steiner
Photo courtesy of Dr. J.P. Dunn