My name is Mary Culotta and I am a Physician Assistant, Clinical Professor, and founding Director of Didactic Education for the Xavier University PA Program. In 2022, by the grace of God and a very fortunate connection by the university provost, our program was notified about a possible candidate to fill our much-needed role of anatomy and physiology professor. It was then that we were introduced to Dr. Baha Adam. Shortly thereafter, he was interviewed and hired to join our team.

With our school being so new at the time, consisting of a small team, and covering an incredibly vast amount of material in a very short amount of time, building course material for any of the program’s classes was a substantial obstacle indeed. This was compounded by the fact that there was very little time between his hiring and when he was needed to begin instruction. One can imagine how significant such a course is for our school, and since we have the medical school model as our curriculum’s base and organ system structured courses, the anatomy and physiology components are of the most important and foundational for our students.

Being academic director at that time, it was my role to introduce and familiarize Dr. Adam with the curriculum and PA education, as well as guide him through his first year of building lessons, test questions, and teaching.

In my prior seven years of practice in an extremely busy, forty-bed intensive care unit, as well as my now five years in PA education, I have met few medical professionals or professors who have displayed as strong a work ethic as Dr. Adam has. He maintains a constant and idealistic striving towards creating and maintaining a course that is not just suitable for PA and medical students, but challenging and effective in setting them up for success as clinicians. He truly wants to do things the right way, the fair way, and does so in a way that still exceeds all expectations. Even without being asked, I have found him writing new test questions to make his course more dynamic and advantageous for his students. He has proven inspirational to myself and many others who have worked with him and is truly one of our program’s greatest blessings.