Chapter 18: MD Anderson, the Texas Medical Schools, and the Graduate School
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Description
In this Chapter Dr. Mendelsohn talks about the linked history of four educational institutions, MD Anderson, the Baylor College of Medicine, the UT Medical School, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences under the administration of the Health Sciences Center. He goes back in history and recalls that in 1941, the Regents of the University of Texas System made the “amazing decision” to create a branch of the medical school that was a cancer center, with the MD Anderson Foundation providing the money. He recounts the linked history of how Houston acquired by the Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Medical School, then talks about creation of the Graduate School and the move to allow MD Anderson degree granting status on Graduate School degrees. Dr. Mendelsohn then moves to an evaluation of the Graduate School, which he believes should be smaller and focused on admitting only the best students. He discusses several ways in which the Graduate School could be academically stronger, particularly in building up its curricula in computer analysis-informatics, areas that will be key for the biotech workforce in the next ten years.
Identifier
MendelsohnJ_03_20121017_C18
Publication Date
10-17-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
John Mendelsohn, MD, Oral History Interview, October 17, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - MD Anderson PastMD Anderson History Institutional Processes Beyond the Institution Building/Transforming the Institution Multi-disciplinary Approaches Growth and/or Change Education Critical Perspectives
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
John Mendelsohn, MD:
Now the medical school. In 1940, I think there were only UT Austin, UT El Paso, and UT Medical Center in Galveston. It was called UT Medical Center. It was the only medical school component of UT, and it was put in Galveston because when it was created in the late 1800s, Galveston was the largest city in Texas. So you put your medical school in your largest city, rather than in Austin. Well, the regents decided to create a branch of University of Texas that would be a cancer center. It was a really amazing and farsighted decision, because they wanted to build a cancer hospital, and they wanted it to be part of an academic program that was in University of Texas. In 1941, the MD Anderson Foundation put up some money, and that’s why the state located it here. It happened to be that just before then that the Texas Medical Center was created. When it was created, Hermann Hospital was here, and I think there was 1 other building, and that’s it. There wasn’t much at Rice either, compared to today. This was a suburb, and there was a big gap before you got downtown. The Texas Medical Center and the city got busy and they said, “Well, we’re going to build a major , world class medical center.” There were 2 early ventures. One was to attract Baylor College of Medicine, which was affiliated with Baylor University in Waco but was located in Dallas, to come to Houston, and they succeeded. The original Baylor building, I think, was built in the 1940s and opened here, so we had a new medical school. Then they worked with the legislature to get this new branch of the University of Texas to come to Houston, and they succeeded. Beyond that point, the Texas Medical Center is not part of what happened to MD Anderson. It was now a UT issue, and UT got busy and recruited Lee Clark to set this institution up. It was a brilliant recruitment because he was energetic and hugely ambitious, had a wonderful vision, and understood how important science was for patient care. He put the stamp of research driven patient care on this institution that we’re so proud of. The enabling legislature was in ’41, in June. Pearl Harbor was in December, and everybody got distracted, but they did set up a small cancer center in James Baker III’s grandfather’s home. I think the University rented it. James Baker Sr., who had a huge role in setting up Rice, had passed away. There are pictures in our archives of 1 building that was converted to house, I think, 20 beds, and other buildings were a small lab and a clinic, and that was MD Anderson for 4 years. Then the war ended, and then R. Lee Clark came and everything took off. As I remember it was around 1970. Houston, which had fewer than 100,000 people when Rice was founded in the late 1800s, had grown tremendously during the war, and became a major port. We built the ship channel in the early 20th century. It was decided that Texas needed more medical schools in Houston. So, the University of Texas created a new school called UT Health Science Center. At that point, MD Anderson had a graduate school, but we had no medical students, and Lee Clark was delighted that there was now going to be a medical school and he gave the graduate school that we had to the Health Science Center to run with the proviso that we would work together. It would be a joint graduate school. Again, you’re trying to conserve resources. Why not have a graduate school that covers both institutions? There were discussions off and on over the next 30 years that we might do the cancer for the medical school, but that never really got to be a big program, partly because of the medical school, partly because of Hermann Memorial, which had a lot of private doctors that weren’t that excited, and partly we were busy growing ourselves. The graduate school then was a joint program, and about 1998 or ’99, I decided that it was a shame that we were doing over half the teaching, over half the students were coming here to do their lab work, yet the diploma was given out by the Health Science Center. So I visited with the regents and said, “We want a joint diploma.” Jim Willerson, who was the president of the Health Science Center, was very much in agreement. He’s a collaborative person, too. We were advised that it was going to be complicated. We had to get certified by the southern branch of the medical school accrediting organization. Stephen Tomasovic, who was the associate dean, had to prepare about a foot-and-a-half-tall pile of paper. We were site visited, and we passed. It was very thrilling. I have a copy of the first diploma that has the signatures of both presidents on it. I’ve met students who say, “Oh, I have a diploma with both presidents.” They like that. So we still have a joint program, and now the latest version of the deanship is that there’s a co-deanship, and 1 person from each institution is asked to do this.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
When was that instituted?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
The co-deanship was instituted in the past year.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the reason for that?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
I think they decided let’s find a way to make both institutions feel the representation. Up until then, the deans, since 1970, had been mainly based at the Health Science Center, and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center felt left out. But there’s a huge joint committee structure in the graduate school approving all the courses and planning everything. I do believe that we have been represented fairly. There was a lot of discussion over 16 years ago that there was a pecking order in laboratory research. Baylor was at the top, we were in the middle, and UT Health Science Center was at the bottom. I think it’s more of a level playing field now. I still think Baylor has incredible laboratory research and science, but I think ours has gotten better. Dr. DePinho is working to make it even better, and the Health Science Center has also gotten better. For a number of years, we have had some very good students in our graduate school, but also some of the students aren’t that strong. My personal view is we should be a smaller graduate student school until we can attract more of the very best students. The students come and interview to decide where they want to go to school. If they see that everybody in the school is darn good, I think they’re more likely to come. That’s the feeling of the current president of MD Anderson, too. For a while, the Health Science Center was not as interested in raising the standards. That doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of good students; there were many good students, but there were some that we didn’t feel were in that top category. We’d like to be in the top quartile of all the graduate schools. We’d like to be in the top 10%, if possible. You do things one at a time. I think that’s something we should still continue to try to do. The Health Science Center has increased its strengths, and I think that’s something we could achieve. We also should be very good, because better students help attract better faculty. You get better research done. You also can select some of the best to become your post-doctoral trainees. They get to know MD Anderson, and they’re excited about it and come back. Good people feed other good people.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How do you evaluate the position of the graduate school in terms of its students and success in producing top individuals?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
It’s what I just said. I think there are some top students, but I think that we’d be better off setting tougher standards. The graduate school has turned out some very fine people that have populated medical schools and universities all over the country. It’s a very good graduate school. We want it to be in the top 10%.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Do you think it’s a matter of setting the bar higher for admission? What’s your view of how the educational programs might need to change to achieve that?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
We spent a lot of time on that. We had a lot of committees here that went over that issue. It has to do with making the courses better, and it has to do with having tougher standards for students getting in and also having tougher standards for students advancing beyond the first 2 years and getting their thesis research plans approved. “Okay, we’re the best. We’re going to have the standards that are the best.” When we pick our surgery fellows, they have a fellowship program. I think they have 6 slots, general cancer surgery. I think they only have to accept 7 or 8, because they know anybody that’s accepted is going to come. The graduate school doesn’t have that. They have to accept a lot more in order to fill their quotas. It’s a ramping up process. It’s not the main mission of MD Anderson in some people’s eyes. Our main mission is to study and treat and train people for cancer. Well, a lot of people in the graduate school are in neurosciences and other areas. The graduate school is very conservative. We wanted to have a program in bioinformatics. We developed it as a strong collaboration with Rice. I don’t know what happened to it exactly. I think our graduate school should think about bioengineering with Rice. I think they should think about computer science and bioinformatics and systems biology with Baylor and Rice in addition to MD Anderson and the Health Science Center. I don’t know how Baylor feels about that. If I were trying to figure out my workforce in the research area 10 years from now, I think that a training program that would encompass those areas I just mentioned would be the most important. Not just biology, because there are a lot of people being trained in biology. Finding people that really understand how to use computers to analyze data from huge amounts of genomics or proteomics data and make inferences about biology using systems analysis; that’s the future. It’s something that we need and the world needs. They’re going to have no trouble getting great jobs, the people who train in these areas.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
You qualified that statement. In some people’s eyes, the educational piece is not part of the main mission, but you obviously see that differently. Or do you?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
Education is huge here. We train hundreds of doctors, nurses, and technical staff as well as research scientists. I think it is a very important part of the mission, but we have a pecking order in our mission. Patient care is listed 1st, research is listed 2nd, education is listed 3rd, and prevention is listed 4th. The reason I think prevention is listed 4th is that we’re a cancer center, and the people that come here mostly have cancer already. They’ve had the diagnosis, and they’re referred here. If you’re doing prevention, it’s a whole different deal. You want to work with healthy people. You have to set up the infrastructure and the place to come to. People that are healthy don’t want to come to a clinic that’s full of people getting chemo and wearing hats because they’ve lost their hair. Our clinics are very busy, because just a lot of emergencies have come up, and people aren’t always seen on time. If you’re going to a prevention doctor, you want to be in and out. You want to go back to work.
Recommended Citation
Mendelsohn, John MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 18: MD Anderson, the Texas Medical Schools, and the Graduate School" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1434.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1434
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