Chapter 16: The Gulf Coast Consortium Postdoctoral Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency Program
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Description
In this chapter, Dr. Tinkey explains her role in creating the Gulf Coast Consortium Postdoctoral Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency Program, part of the Department’s education mission. She notes that former chair, Dr. Ken Grey, always has a fellowship position he usually awarded to a veterinarian in private practice who was exploring other careers. When she took over the chairmanship, there were 25 – 30 veterinarians at the Texas Medical Center and she had the idea to link these professionals and institutions to create a training program. Dr. Suzanne Craig, she notes, was responsible for setting the program in place and launching it in 2006. She talks about the numbers of fellows involved and where they have found positions after leaving.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_03_20160624_C16
Publication Date
6-24-2016
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Beyond the Institution; Education; On Education; Research; Beyond the Institution; Building/Transforming the Institution; Leadership; On Leadership
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Thanks. There was one more thing. I have a feeling we may even be continuing this conversation when I ask this next question. You’re one of the founding members of the Gulf Coast Consortium. It’s in 2006. And that’s the Postdoctoral Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency Program. So tell me about that.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Well, so because we’re an academic institution one of our institutional missions is education. And so the Veterinary Department had always participated in educational programs. We bring college summer students in that are interested in learning more about either cancer research or veterinary medicine or laboratory animal medicine or all of the above. And Dr. Gray always had one position that he called a fellowship. And he reserved that position for a veterinarian. It wasn’t a permanent position. It was a one-to-two-year position that he had a heart for veterinarians in practice who were exploring other career opportunities and might want to explore research. So he had one position that he kept funded, where if he had someone who wanted a year or two opportunity to take a look at another career, he did. And it was a great thing. I could name a list of people who came through that one-to-two-year fellowship who left and either said, “I want to go do a residency,” or “I’m going to try and get another job,” who stayed in animal research. And of course we really need great veterinarians in animal research. A lot of veterinarians don’t normally come this way because it seems not animal-based to them. And so while that was great, one of the thoughts that I had was here at the Medical Center not only is there MD Anderson, but there’s Baylor College of Medicine, there’s UT Health, our sister institution right across the street. There’s Methodist Research Institute. There’s Texas Heart Institute. The University of Houston. They all have animal research programs. And so I’d have to count them up but I would say there’s probably 25 or 30 veterinarians here in the Texas Medical Center. That’s a powerful group of people with a ton of education, experience, and really good information to give to someone who might want to learn this career. And while the fellowship was great, my own thought was with just a little bit more work we could have an American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine-recognized residency program. Look at the volume here. We’ve got 25 or 30 veterinarians. We’ve got five or six institutions that all have animal care programs. What one doesn’t have certainly one of the others has. And if we worked together, we could have such a great training program. And that was how the Gulf Coast Consortium was founded. It seemed like a shame to me and a couple of the other vets that we had this huge infrastructure and faculty around us in the Texas Medical Center but we weren’t leveraging that. We were all each doing our own thing but we weren’t really leveraging what we could do together.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Who are the other vets involved in creating this consortium?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
I liked the idea and I was strongly supportive. But the person who really pushed this through was Dr. Suzanne Craig, who’s now the department chair and director of the animal care program at Medical University of South Carolina. And the year 2006, that was the year I became chairman. And so we had talked about this for a while. And when I became chairman I said, “Let’s go for this.” So she was really the one who negotiated. She reached out to the veterinarians at Baylor. And the first three initial members of the consortium were Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health, and UT MD Anderson. And so she really negotiated the deal. She wrote the program. She found a way to get funding. She pushed other people to get funding. And so in 2006 the first laboratory animal medicine residency program that the TMC had ever had was created. And that’s the Gulf Coast Consortium. And those three members are still in it. Over time we’ve included as auxiliary members the University of Houston. A local vendor, Charles River Laboratories, has a large animal facility here in town. They’re included. We send our residents out to the MD Anderson Primate Resource in Bastrop, Texas. While they’re not an official member, Methodist Research Institution is now hosting the journal club for our group of residents. So it’s continuing to grow and do well.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
How many residents per year about?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
At MD Anderson we have between one and two. We had one. We went up to two because we got an NIH grant for that second one, which NIH unfortunately isn’t going to renew, so we’re back down to one now. But each consortium member has one to two residents for a two-year program. So at any one time we usually have somewhere between four and six depending on where we are in the cycle.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, that’s exciting.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
It is exciting.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So it’s been in existence 10 years. And what have you seen come out of that?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
A lot of things really. The fundamentals about bringing young people in and teaching them about the basic biology, diseases, biomethodology, and research uses of a wide species of animals, that’s fundamental. That will never change. But I think we as a consortium have matured over time in that we’ve learned from our residents about more things they would like to see as far as getting more acumen with research tools such as scientific writing and library resources. Getting some time to do some specialty things such as some more activities in our pathology laboratories. So we’ve learned from them. I think they’ve learned from us. We’ve learned just logistical things about scheduling and moving people around. Ways that work better than other ways. So fundamentally it’s still the same. It’s to take veterinarians and teach them laboratory animal medicine, and secondarily teach them how to succeed in an academic career.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Have most of these individuals gone into academic careers?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yes.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And where do they normally end up?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
All over really. Golly, we’ve got folks on the east coast. Do we have anybody on the west coast? I think we go out as far as like Colorado, maybe not anybody in California. Oh, well, we’ve got faculty members certainly who’ve gone the same places. A former faculty member is now the director of the animal care program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. And I mentioned Dr. Craig is now at South Carolina. So we’re spanning the globe. We’re seeding MD Anderson everywhere. But yeah, and a lot of the folks -- Texas seems to be like this, and Houston seems to be more like this. Sometimes I’ll talk to folks outside of Texas who are aghast that anyone would want to come to Houston. I’m not sure what they’ve heard about. I guess they’ve heard it’s hot and it has a lot of traffic. So a lot of the folks who end up coming for the residency in Houston, it’s because they want to be in the Gulf Coast area. So I’d say more of our residents have found their ways to positions in Texas, Louisiana, maybe Arkansas, stayed in the area.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 16: The Gulf Coast Consortium Postdoctoral Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency Program" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1236.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1236
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