Linnea Susan Hauge, age 46, passed away peacefully on Dec 25, 2010 at her home in Ann Arbor, MI after a courageous battle with breast cancer.

She was born in the fall of 1964 in Madison, WI to Roger and Bonnie Hauge and grew up on their family farm in the Fall River area. She graduated from Fall River High School. She enjoyed participating in band, playing the French horn and keyboard in the Rock Band. She was on their state championship gymnastics team. She continued her love for gymnastics by coaching and judging, which helped to pay her way through college. She attended UWEC where she played her French horn in the band and majored in music education. She spent her summers as a counselor at Camp-We-Ha-Kee in Northern Wisconsin. After completing her BME degree she moved to Chicago and in the fall of 1989 she married Tom Barber.

She attended DePaul University and the University of Illinois and earned her MS in Kinesiology with emphasis in Sports Psychology. Linnea completed her PhD at the University of Utah in Exercise and Sport Science in 1997 and taught briefly in Physical Education before finding her true calling as an Education Specialist in the Department of Surgery at Rush University in Chicago. She served as the Interim Director of the Center of Medical Education and Research at Rush until she moved to the University of Michigan. Linnea was a tireless advocate for learners at all levels, a friend and guide for struggling learners, a national leader in many education organizations, and a mentor to many interested in education research.

While Education Specialist in the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan, she was closely involved in the redesign of the open and laparoscopic skills curricula, the mock oral exams and trauma team training. She was also involved in course design of the M4 Surgery Bootcamp from its inception. Linnea gave highly acclaimed lecture series on skills acquisition for the Graduate Medical Education Scholars Program and was the course director for an M4 elective: Residents as Teachers. She served in national leadership positions in several organizations including the Association for Surgical Education, AAMC Research in Medical Education (RIME) and the Central Group on Education Affairs. Through this time she continued her research in surgical skills acquisition and communication. At the time of her passing, Linnea was the PI or CO-PI on three externally-funded education research projects. Linnea received the prestigious Stemmler Award from the National Board of Medical Examiners which funded her work assessing medical student performance during phone consultations with nurses. This has been accepted for oral presentation at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Association for Surgical Education.