Dale Netski has taught at the College of Southern Nevada, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and now at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, gaining the respect of a large, diverse group of students who’ve gone on to flourish in their educational and career disciplines.
So what does this Las Vegas native who earned a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology feel compelled to do?
Try and find an even better way to educate future physicians.
Yes, this associate professor who teaches immunology and best practices for conducting research studies — he also serves as the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine’s director of student research and chair of the department of medical education — said “there can always be a better or efficient way to teach or do something.”
With that philosophy in mind, Netski recently finished a six-month online program through Harvard Medical School that helps train scholars in techniques for teaching diverse and dynamic medical students.
“The program has allowed me to gain the necessary skills to design an engaging, interactive medical curriculum that integrates novel and traditional educational theories and methods,” he said. “This course also contained several learning modules directly aimed at improving medical education scholarship, along with team projects and a capstone project. My goal is to now use what I learned from this curriculum to develop a medical education faculty development program to improve how we deliver and evaluate the educational curriculum at our medical school.”
Time and again Netski’s philosophy can be seen at work.
Never stop learning
When the pandemic first hit, Netski had never before taught online. So he took another course through Harvard that offered unique ways to teach immunology virtually.
To help prepare himself for his leadership role with the department of medical education, he took a virtual seminar course through the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“Gaining new knowledge on a topic opens our mind to new perspectives that you may not have thought of previously,” he said. “Lifelong learning is a passion of mine.”
As he talked about his life, about how he got to this time and place, the professor recalled that his passion for learning during his childhood could be seen well outside the classroom. “I learned how to slalom water ski at the age of 7 at Lake Mead,” he said. “I just loved learning how to do it, couldn’t get enough of it. My dad used to love going to the lake and I spent many weekends with him boating and water skiing. I still love skiing, both water and snow. One reason I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, instead of UNLV was because of its access to snow skiing.”
It was from his father, Rudolph “Dan” Netski Jr., who graduated from the first paramedic class offered in Southern Nevada, that Netski began to develop an interest in medicine. When the elder Netski, a U.S. Navy corpsman, came home from his work with Mercy Ambulance, he would tell his son about the runs he made to help people whose health issues ranged from heart attacks to gunshot wounds, exploits that occasionally made their way into the newspapers. “I remember when it came on the news about the fire at the MGM (the 1980 fire at the hotel killed 85 people) and knowing that my dad had to be there helping people,” Netski said.
As he grew older, the paramedic’s son found himself hanging around the Mercy Ambulance station, listening to life-saving stories from other paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and making some spending money by washing ambulances. In his senior year at Clark High School, he completed the training to become an EMT. Then he was driving ambulances and helping patients himself. Once he found himself doing four runs where he helped heart attack victims. “I did CPR compressions on four straight people and I thought my arms were going to fall off,” he said. “It’s not easy work.”
His time as an EMT brought him into frequent contact with emergency physicians. “I really admired how they handled people at the most difficult times, still do,” Netski said. “I had it in my mind that I was going to become a doctor.”
Road to research science
That would change during his last year at UNR where he worked his way through school by waiting tables. There, he majored in cellular and developmental biology, a common pre-med major. A discussion with a friend who worked in an immunology lab at the UNR School of Medicine fascinated him and he decided to talk with the lab’s principal investigator. She allowed him to work in the lab with Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows, and technicians doing experiments on a specific cell in the immune system called a natural killer cell. The work further ignited his long-held interest in finding out how things work and he went on to get a master’s degree in biology.
“During the expanded coursework and research lab experience over the next couple of years, I knew what I wanted to do, become a research scientist,” Netski recalled. “I loved the collaborative laboratory environment and doing experiments…”
One of three students admitted to the UNR School of Medicine’s Ph.D. program in cellular and molecular biology, Netski got the opportunity to work on a type of hantavirus that was causing a respiratory infection called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. His work would be published in a respected peer-reviewed journal.
“During my Ph.D. training, I met my wife, Alison, a Reno native, when she came to our lab to complete her senior biology thesis. We started dating and got married after her first year of medical school at UNR.”
The couple now has two daughters and both work at the medical school. Dr. Alison Netski is the interim vice dean for clinical affairs and chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral health.
Once Alison Netski finished medical school, she did her residency training at the University of Maryland (followed by further training at the renowned Sheppard Pratt Psychiatric Hospital in Maryland). Dale secured a position as principal investigator and director of laboratory operations at the nearby Johns Hopkins School of Medicine an eventually became an assistant professor in the its division of infectious disease.
At Johns Hopkins, his research stood out, as he successfully obtained a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to examine the antibody immune response to acute hepatitis C (HCV). He published one of the first reports characterizing the antibody immune response in acute infection. He also was awarded several sub-contracts for collaborations examining the antibody immune response to HCV. The success of his research endeavors and collaborations there is reflected in his more than 35 publications for his work.
Time for family
While the couple enjoyed their professional work, both Netskis worried that daycare workers were raising their two daughters more than they were. After six years in Maryland, they decided in 2007 to return to Nevada, where they had family. Alison took a position with Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health and Dale assumed a larger share of parental duties. He also worked in administration in a family business as his daughters went through elementary and middle school. “I became a pretty good soccer coach,” he recalled, laughingly.
In 2014, with his daughters older, he took a part-time position teaching biology at the College of Southern Nevada. “I enjoyed getting back to that,” he said. “I truly love teaching.”
When the medical school opened in 2017, both Netskis had important positions. Today, the man who became “a pretty good soccer coach” loves to talk about the students he’s coached as director of student research.
“To date, our students have published over 60 articles in the scientific literature and presented over 100 posters at scientific meetings,” he said. “Our students have added to the literature in many areas, including Alzheimer’s disease, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, the role of diet in gestational diabetes, and the role of different treatment modalities in metastatic melanoma, to name a few. The students at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine are making their mark in research as future physician-scientists.”
