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The Blade & Light Society’s Mentor Award: A fascinating story

SkinCare Physicians’ Dr. Kenneth A. Arndt received the Blade & Light Society’s 2015 Mentor of the Year Award, a tribute to his love of teaching and his life-long commitment to learning. With his curious mind, Dr. Arndt could not help but ask Dr. Murad Alam about the origin of the impressive cast bronze sculpture he received. It turned out to be a fascinating story!

The Cathédral sculpture from Rodin (la Cathédral) inspired Dr. Alam, one of the founders of the Society, to use hands in the trophy given their importance in surgery. He observed that using hands from two different persons would also communicate the passing on of skills via mentorship. In his words “the hands were an idea we had after visiting the Rodin museum in Paris. We took some photographs of our hands and had an artist in Chicago make molds and cast the image in bronze. He used our photos as models, and used the hands of some of his colleagues for the actual casts. The thought process is that the hands are of two people — a mentor guiding a student holding a scalpel.”

The result of this creative process is a beautiful sculpture which now sits prominently in Dr. Arndt’s office.

The Blade & Light Society creates mentorship opportunities for young dermatologic students, encourages collaborative evidence based research, and performs volunteer Mohs surgery for skin cancer in underserved regions of the world.