Chapter 04: A Masters in Public Health and a Focus on Education
Files
Description
Ms. Villejo talks about her decision to return to school for her Masters in Public Health (1982, M.P.H. Health Administration, University of Texas Health Science Center, School of Public Health, San Antonio, TX). She describes her growing focus on education. She also notes the absence of formal mentors during her education and early career.
Ms. Villejo then talk about the impact of her National Cancer Institute Internship (1981-1982, University of Texas Health Science Center, School of Public Health), which allowed her to see educational programs developed at a national level. She also talks about the professional skills she learned in this training period.
Identifier
VillejoL_01_20150507_C04
Publication Date
5-7-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES, Oral History Interview, May 07, 2015
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Educational Path; Professional Path; Mentoring; Formative Experiences; The Professional at Work
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s neat. That’s neat. Now tell me about bringing your college to a close and your next step from there.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
So that was interesting. As I mentioned, I started out in biology, and then switched over to psychology because of a growing interest there. And I had been very active, as I mentioned, at U of H. And we did a lot of connections with the organizations that we worked with in the community. And so unbeknownst to me, there weren’t a lot of positions available for bachelors’ degrees in psychology. (laughter) So I was quite shocked when I found that out. Luckily I was able to get a position working with—it was the Rio Grande Federation of Health Care Centers. And they provided support to community health centers, migrant community health centers. Kind of administrative support and processes and how to run, because they were in the community, and people from the community that might not have had a health administration degree or whatever. So that was a really—I helped them do some research and support. And they traveled. I was able to travel a little bit to the different health centers to see. So that was a really great experience. And from there I decided to go to the school of public health.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Before I ask you more about that, that experience with the Rio Grande Federation, that sounds like an amazing experience, I mean kind of windows into all sorts of communities all over Texas. Tell me about your big lessons from that or things that maybe surprised you, really made you grow.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
And actually it was in the Southwest. So we got to go to New Mexico and Arizona and Texas. And I was able to go to some national conferences for community health centers, National Association of Community Health Centers, and learn from the people that I was working with as far as supporting those centers, and what they were doing, providing services to people that really didn’t have a lot of access to health care. So that was a tremendous experience for me. Part of that tremendous experience was learning that a bad situation is a good learning experience. The person that happened to be the director had been a trainer, and he was an excellent trainer, but he wasn’t a very good director. And there were just some I would say unethical situations. And so I just really learned that even organizations and people that you think are really there to do the best for people that need it, sometimes they are not what you would hope that they would be.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. You’re not the first person who’s told a story about learning from a negative model. How much you can glean from that. It also goes to the issue of how it can be a challenge sometimes to find leadership education. How do you get that experience? How do you get that direct education?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
And what they call the Peter Principle. He was a great trainer. But he had absolutely no skills as a leader of an organization. And so that was a very big learning experience. And I moved from there to go to graduate school. Chapter 04
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
And I moved from there to go to graduate school.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. Yeah. So tell me about making that decision.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
I had actually a couple of really good friends that were going to the school of public health. And so I really learned more about what that possibility could be. And I was very interested in it. And obviously by that time saw that a bachelor’s degree in psychology wasn’t going to really lift me up to the career that I had hoped for. Because I had worked in college for the state Department of Public Welfare and for temporary agencies. And I think I did a good job, because my bosses really liked me and wanted me to stay. But I knew that that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I mean it was nice to have a job and learn from the different places that I worked for. But I definitely knew that wasn’t going to be where I was going to land.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Who was serving as a mentor to you during this time or giving you encouragement or serving as a role model, all those things?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
There was very many of them. I took people as role models that I might not have had a mentoring relationship with, but just watching what they did. Like the friends that I mentioned that were at the school of public health. They were telling me what their classes were, and how that was working, and their professors, and so forth. And that sounded very interesting to me, something that I would be interested. Because as I mentioned I was interested in public health. I had in undergraduate thought for a brief time about going to nursing school. But I guess back then I didn’t really realize all of the opportunities that nursing could provide. And it seemed more like a role that didn’t have as much authority to it as far as working under a doctor. And I wasn’t very good about authority figures I guess. (laughter)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, it sounds like you had a sense of your own voice, a sense of your own—you had an evolving sense of your own leadership, and you wanted to be a person who is making her ideas happen.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Mm-hmm. Well, and my father was very very strict. And so I think that—he was a marine, and so he had his own little boot camp in his children. (laughter) So I thought it was funny because then working at MD Anderson, when you came across some of the really strong-willed physicians, I’d be like mm, this all you got. (laughter) So I didn’t feel like oh gosh, cowed by, oh, better do that, better think that way or do that. But anyway, as far as—I’m sure that my mother and father were some of my major mentors. And then the people that—I mean really the people that come to mind are Mr. and Mrs. Mouton. Mrs. Mouton was a coleader with my mom in girl scouts. Mr. Mouton was a boy scout leader too. And they had fourteen kids. And they were still very involved in the community. I mean we’d go over to the Moutons’ and you’d just get in a line in the backyard, and he’d be cooking hamburgers or something, and everybody in the neighborhood would be there, and their fourteen kids. (laughter) So it’s like—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
They had their own community.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
I mean people like that that were always—they had so much to do, can you even imagine that? No. I can’t either. But their doors were always open. They were always giving back, they were always in the middle of everything. I mean I had a lot of respect for them. They were wonderful role models. Of course some of my other first role models were a couple of the nuns that were—here’s my first grade teacher and the principal. Not all nuns were my role models though, let me say. (laughter)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Some of those negative role models. (laughter)
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Yeah.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, tell me about your graduate program. Now let’s see. You got your master’s in public health in 1982, is that correct?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Mm-hmm.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. And how long was that program? When did you start that program?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Actually I started in ’80. And so the school of public health here in Houston opened a satellite campus in San Antonio. And I happened to be living in San Antonio at the time. That’s where I went to take that job. So I went to that program, which was great, because it was in the medical center, actually part of the medical school at that time when I first started. I mean not part, but right next to the medical school. And some really great professors. And you’d get like almost one-on-one time with them because the program was so small. Another good thing about the program was that it was really built for the military. The doctors and nurses that were there that wanted to get their masters’ in public health. And so they had a timeline. And so they had to move through the program quickly because they had a certain amount of time to get it done. And so I think that really informed the rest of us, which was I think they were definitely more than half of the student population there, doctors, nurses, dentists, but they were in the military. Obviously San Antonio at that time was a big military town.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Were they older than the average student as a result?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Yeah, because they already had their dentist—we had a dentist, doctors, nurses. So they already had a degree.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And that can sometimes really change and make a program much more serious or change the focus a little bit.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Mm-hmm. Great group of people. And we had some great professors.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So how did your interests evolve during that time?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Well, my focus was health administration. They didn’t really have what they had after that, health education and health promotion master’s degree, which they have on the U of H campus [should be UT campus]. Now at that time I was able to work in an organization called Intercultural Development and Research Association. And they worked a lot with education.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now I missed that piece. When did education come into the picture as being a focus of yours?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
You mean my master’s program?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. I mean because you were talking about psychology. When did suddenly you start to say, “No, it’s education where I want to focus my attention”?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
You mean going to the master’s program? Well, because I knew that with a degree in psychology I wasn’t going to be able to get—because I had obviously applied for a lot of jobs with that degree in psychology. And they always wanted like a little bit experience or something else. And so when I was exposed to the school of public health, then I started thinking well, that might be something that would be very helpful for me to really move forward in a career.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. So you were saying you had the opportunity to work at this Intercultural Development and Research Association. How did that expand your experience and change your perspective?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Well, it was great, because the section that I worked in was mental health. And so I was able to use the work that I was doing for my dissertation. So what I was looking at was mental health resources available for Mexican Americans. And so through that organization I was able to again travel around the Southwest to look at some model mental health organizations. And so that was very lucky and very interesting. My other position there, because as I mentioned I had done some conference planning in my undergraduate. And so my other position for them was to organize a conference for them for mental health in Mexican Americans. So that was another thing that I was responsible for there. And so that was great situation to have a position, a job that paid, that was helping me with my school and living expenses.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure. Now I noticed that also you have a National Cancer Institute internship listed from ’81 to ’82, which was also the year you got your master’s in public health. So tell me a little bit about folding that into your educational experience.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
So when I was at the school of public health, they posted opportunities on the bulletin board. And so I saw that application. And it was for a health communications internship at the National Cancer Institute in the Office of Cancer Communication. So that sounded really interesting and so I applied for that. And I know that they contacted my dean and I guess asked him about me. He told them he thought I was a serious student. Blah blah blah. And so I was able to have that opportunity. And that was a wonderful opportunity, because then you really saw how programs are developed at the national level. And so my responsibilities in that job was to develop some communication plans for some of the initiatives that were being developed. And one of the things that was very shocking to me—remember this was back in—was it ’80, ’81? That the lady that was writing all these “What You Need to Know About Cancer of the _____” [brochures] was sitting in an office smoking away with the ashtray overflowing [ ]. So they put the interns in what used to be called the cloakroom. Do you remember what a cloakroom looks like?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I do.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
OK. So that’s where the interns’ office was. We were in the cloakroom. And the office next to us, one of the really wonderful communication specialists there was a big smoker too. So we had to buy a fan so that we weren’t choking up on the smoke. So that was back before they did not allow smoking in government agencies, much less MD Anderson. I mean they probably told you they used to sell ashtrays here with MD Anderson logos on them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
A different era.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Mm-hmm. Well, even when I came here they were still smoking. The ban didn’t come here in the institution for—oh gosh, I don’t even remember when. But it was several years after.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now you mentioned that this offered you a great opportunity to see how communications—what the issues involved—that was like badly constructed sentence. But you began to be exposed to the issues that were involved in developing a national communication plan. What were some of the surprises or lessons that you learned about that?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
So definitely some of the national campaigns. And they were developing a lot of the breast cancer awareness initiatives at that time. And they were also celebrating I want to say the twenty-fifth anniversary of the War on Cancer. Was it the twenty-fifth at that time or the tenth maybe?
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It may have been the tenth because it was 1972 I think the National Cancer Act was passed.
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
OK, so it was the tenth. And so it was very interesting to see how marketing organizations to present how they wanted to package this and the branding and the logos. And it was interesting to see how it was presented and the discussion around that. And it was also interesting to see like on some of the programs that we did they did translate a lot of things into Spanish, and so some of the staff would say, “Well, Louise, come to us with this meeting, and we want you to give us some feedback on that.” And of course the presenter had no idea that the intern was going to have—being asked to weigh in heavily. So they didn’t really pay that much attention, which was not a good or a bad thing. But it was just really interesting to see all the dynamics of how people make presentations to do business with different organizations.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How did that affect what you did later on?
Louise Villejo, MPH, MCHES:
Well, it was a perfect position for me to be able to come here, because the people that I was working with obviously were working with the people here at MD Anderson and across the country. So that’s how I found out about the position, because I really didn’t want to come back to Houston. I was trying to get a job in San Antonio.
Recommended Citation
Villejo, Louise and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 04: A Masters in Public Health and a Focus on Education" (2015). Interview Chapters. 1519.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1519
Conditions Governing Access
Open
