Chapter 13: A New Challenge in the Office of Institutional Diversity (2010-2011)
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Description
Mr. Brewer begins this chapter by explaining why he left his role as Center Administrative Director of the Emergency Center in 2010 and took on the role of Director of Diversity Community Partnership in the Office of Institutional Diversity (2010-2011). He cites the ongoing stress of the job and describes with examples the lack of support that leadership provided to the Emergency Center even as it was growing.
He next explains the role he took on working with students (K – 12 and college students) to inspire them to pursue college and careers in the sciences and oncology. He explains that diversity was an important topic in the institution at that time, as evidenced by the creation of an Office of Diversity headed by Harry Gills. Mr. Brewer specifies that in his role, he was not tasked with addressing diversity issues as they presented themselves within the institution.
Next, Mr. Brewer describes initiatives he worked on to bring resources to students to pursue higher level scientific work. He talks about a project on healthcare information initiated with the Houston Chronicle, noting that approval has been reached only to have the entire diversity program discontinued and the Office of Diversity disbanded.
Identifier
BrewerCC_03_20190620_C13
Publication Date
6-20-2019
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS, Oral History Interview, June 20, 2019
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Codes Overview; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Leadership; On Leadership; MD Anderson Culture; Working Environment; Diversity at MD Anderson; Education at MD Anderson; Beyond the Institution
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
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
It’s all right. So a lot of things led, a lot of things—there was not one particular thing that just broke, it was a combination of things. I was accomplished; I had been successful. It’s probably maybe somebody else can do this better. If there’s somebody else who think they can do it better than me, you’re welcome. And then there was the opportunity to work. I had a tremendous passion for developing people, for working with students and training students all throughout my career, working with high school kids, going to career fairs, etc. So the Institutional Diversity Department was looking for someone to come in and help them to develop K–12 partnerships for education for students, careers, and a number of folks in the institution knew what I had been doing in the community and working with career focus for students and nurses not only undergraduate students but high school kids and [beyond?] but also college and so I was recruited. I was recruited. At the time, it was a great opportunity, and Diversity was very big in the institution. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Yeah. And that was 2000 and ele—2010 you did that.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
A tremendous amount of interest was in Diversity at the institution, and I was made director of a new department called partnership, diversity partnerships, community—director of community partnerships and institution diversity. And my challenge was to go in and create a department, to establish partnerships throughout the community for providing career education for K-12 and beyond students. And that was my challenge. My business plan was created, I created my vision, and my mission was created, and we started establishing relationships with the various school districts. I think I— Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. I have a couple of questions about that. Was the aim to get kids thinking about tracking into oncology? Okay, you’re nodding, so yes.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Yes. The track was number one was to inspire the future workforce for oncology. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. And is another piece of it—because, I mean, this is MD Anderson outreach, so it’s putting the MD Anderson name into people’s heads. So talk to me about that entire package of goals for a job like this.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
The entire package, yeah, and that’s a—the institutional diversity program for community project is an entire another—a whole another two hours of discussion. But in a nutshell, the focus was to help inspire the next generation of oncology providers but beyond that, just to inspire young people to reach higher in health care and to expose them to opportunities that exist in health care beyond the traditional careers that you hear about physicians, nurses and physical therapists, and pharmacists. But there are a tremendous number of opportunities within the hospital setting, and we talked about all types of careers that are not in the mainstream to students. The question is how you reach the students. How do you partner, reach these partnerships? Well, first of all, we have a captive audience because we’re MD Anderson, and my approach was to not only those who sought us out to come and talk to their student, but we reached out to the districts, Houston Independent School District, the Cypress-Fairbanks, the Galena Parks, the Alief, the Spring Branch School Districts, just all of the school districts in the immediate Houston area, the Fort Bend independent school districts. And we would go and sit with the counselors, and we would develop a strategy on what would meet their needs and what they were looking at. That was one of the partnerships that we did. We also partnered with an organization within Houston that also had the same focus, the Junior Achievement societies and the —several other organizations that have developing K-12 programs throughout the city. We— Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Now—oh, I’m sorry, finish your thought.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
But then the program—and as the program developed, we had—we got more fingers beside just high school. We started doing higher level, post high school education and exposure to summer programs. The postdoc program that’s still here, the King Foundation, that’s a program for the summer. We worked with those students, providing them initial seminars about the diversity in health care professions here at MD Anderson. And I pulled together various departments in for my partners. My emergency center experience, my emergency center background opened the doors for my diversity program because I knew all of the partners I needed. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. I have no doubt and I—you didn’t sneak this by me. You did this fancy footwork about how there was a big story with the institutional diversity program, and I get that I’m sure that’s a very complicated discussion. But I wonder if you could comment because we, I mean, haven’t talked about the issue of promoting diversity within MD Anderson and your commitment to that, so—and you’re looking at the clock because—(laughs).
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
No, no, no, no, no, not that. The clock is not an issue for—I’m sorry. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. No, no, no, I just wanted—no. And so maybe you’re feeling like that we hadn’t given that short trip, but we can stay a little bit later than 4:30, too, if you want. What was that piece? You weren’t just moving into an outreach department; you’re moving into a diversity department here. So what was that commitment, and what was the institution’s approach and commitment to developing streams of individuals from diverse backgrounds into oncology and into MD Anderson?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
I think the institutional commitment at the time was very high. First of all, it’s committed to creating its own separate institution department. I believe now it’s integrated with the human resources, but at the time, it was an independent department. And the director—excuse me, the head of the diversity program was—he held the title vice president, and he sat in the executive branch. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. And who was this?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Harry [Gibbs?]. He passed away several years ago but he—and he reported directly to the president. So the institution held diversity at a very high level as you can see by having that level of assignment of an exec—of a vice—of an executive vice president for diversity who sat on the executive council for the institution. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. What were some of the problems with diversity that you were seeing in with your various roles to the institution. Being promised with promotion, I mean what were some of the issues that this new attention was intended to address?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Well, I think some of the issues that had to do with diversity in the institution was different from my job at the community partnership. Because I wasn’t dealing with the same issues as the institutional diversity—directly as the institutional diversity office was dealing with. My approach was I focused on community partnerships and reaching a lot of the underserved community, if you will, but not necessarily all underserved, and that’s kind of like throwing the baby out with the wash. I dealt with some very challenging students in the community. Some of the ISDs had very big challenges with lack of exposure to the students. Like I said, I would go to a place and say MD Anderson is so near these ISDs but light-years away. Many of these students had never heard of the Texas Medical Center. They had never been to the medical center. They never leave out their own little community. It was those type of challenges that I was facing in creating this partnership and exposure for MD Anderson. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. In some of these communities was there a mistrust even of health care institutions or medical? I mean, I’m thinking of some other conversations I’ve had with folks where there had been difficulties in getting health care to some these communities. There’s not necessarily, oh, my god, the doctor’s coming to help us kind of approach. So that’s why I’m asking that question.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
I think that it’s very difficult, and I think it’s all of the above. And you go out into communities, stigmas about oncology, about cancer is still there. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. For sure.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Like I said light-years away from their community, lack of resources, poor, very poor neighborhoods, lack of money. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Well, and the whole health disparities issue.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
All the disparity issues. And when you go out into the partnership, you bring—you—so we were carrying not only exposure about various careers, but we are also teaching about oncology and trying to change the face of oncology as maybe the community was perceiving it to be and— Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. What were some of the attitudes that you were—from the folks that you were talking with both the students and maybe the administrators and teachers in the schools? What were you up against?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
I think the attitude was thank you for coming, thank you for caring enough to talk to my students. We would talk to some of the—no one had come to our before. They always want to talk to the high-academic-level students, or no one thought about this level of students to be exposed. We would talk to them at their level. Maybe you can’t be a doctor, maybe you can’t be a nurse, maybe you can’t be a physical therapist, a pharmacist or maybe you can’t be an administrator, but maybe you can be a police officer, maybe you can be a housekeeper, maybe you can be a dietary person, they all work in the hospitals. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Well, you went through that process yourself. I mean I’m remembering our conversations in the first session where it took people saying to you, “Wow, you’re smart. You could do x, y, and z.” Suddenly, you think in a new way.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Right, and that’s what we took to the community and the partnerships. As we grew the program, we started identifying all of these issues, and we had developed strategies on how we’re going to approach these issues, and we had developed programs to meet the particular need of that particular group. So one week, I might be speaking with the first, the second, and third graders at some school in Galena Park, fifth and sixth graders, and next week is the middle school kids in Fort Bend ISD, next week is the health care studies program in Cypress-Fairbanks, then the next week, we have the graduate students for the summer. We got the predoctoral program for students, so all these different pieces we are managing and exposing all levels, so we don’t forget the least of our society. [01:28:11 Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. What impact did you feel you had doing that? Because you were in that role for about a year before you moved on to the next challenge.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
A couple years, yeah, about two years. Well, the impact, tremendous. If you look at my portfolio, you’ll see all the relationships that I established for the institution, I don’t know, 40 or 50 relationships that I had throughout the community at all levels not only high schools but colleges and universities. And I also sit on a lot—a number of community boards, the YMCA board, the Asian Commerce, Katy ISD board of commerce for developing a program for Katy because Katy—this was before Katy became Katy. Katy, what do you that, the commerce department, what do you—not commerce. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Chamber of Commerce.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Chamber of Commerce identify—they did not have a good road map for developing the support, educational support for their community. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Really?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
[01:2925] There are no colleges out there. They were looking at—looking out for all this growth in these hospitals coming but where are we going to get the resources? We don’t have a community college for training nurses, technicians, etc., we don’t have a college out here. They were talking about that. I was in on the early discussions about that. And now, it just exploded. So they’re trying to look at their pipeline for the future. I was fortunate enough to be appointed to serve on those boards by the institution. One, by diversity office, to Katy, I represented the nursing division because they had no—because of my relationship. As far as partnership was concerned, I was appointed to serve on that board in the Katy area. And it was those types of activities that kept springing up as the program was evolving. And we would participate on a national level with minority health initiatives that people probably don’t even know about, about AMSCO and — where are these, the society where they go out and they get the diversity partners with—have partnerships with historically black institutions. And they identify and assist young researchers and come together to present their research projects, and these are high school students prior going to college. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Very cool.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
It just opened up a whole new world of activity that was going on with students and health care occupations. And that— Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. And that sort of thing is so important. I mean that issue of first generation maybe to college or to graduate school, kind of entering into that world of research, and for student who doesn’t come from a family that has already had experience with that, the family can’t help them. Where can you go to get support to learn how to write a research paper? I mean the family doesn’t know and so the poor student is really left with no guidance, and so setting in place those resources, it’s the only way those pipelines can get established from those communities.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
And that’s what we... One of our philosophies was establishing these pipelines for career, education for K-12 students, was a major focus of the program. And then the ultimate product of the program was to work with—was to identify—through happenstance, identify a lack of information about health care in the Houston Chronicle program. The Houston Chronicle had a program and has a program called communities and it’s called—I think it’s called [Communities in Education?]. I might be incorrect in the proper name, but they have—if you ever read the Houston Chronicle, they have this little advertisement. For lack of words, it said, Exxon Mobil read—help [read to reader?] or something like that and thanks to Exxon Mobil for providing read to readers to our students, high school students, etc. Well, I went to a program, and they had all these recruiters there at this program, and I saw Houston Chronicle, and it had Communities in Education, and I was in community partnership, so I said, “Well, this sounds like something I need to know about.” So I approached him and I was talking to—and then was started talking about what they were doing, and they were telling about what they were doing with education for students in the community. They create these online programs, and the various organizations will send their employees to help with education, teaching them about engineering and about writing or whatever. Just about every profession was represented except health care. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Oh, that’s crazy, in Houston, oh, my gosh.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Red lights were going off in my head—green lights rather, green lights, green lights, green lights, opportunity. I got the person’s card, I said, “I want to talk with you because you don’t have anything on health care.” “Oh, we never thought about it,” and I said, “Okay. You thought about it now, so we’re going to do this. We’re going to create a program for health care professions in the community, education. And we want to have our name, MD Anderson, thank you MD Anderson for participating in the read to reader or Community in Education.” I came back, approached the department, my department head and thought it was great idea. Obviously, there’s a lot of politics involved. You’ve got to go through different people, make sure there’s appropriate news, and all of that, marketing department, etc., lots—you know philanthropy, there was a lot of stuff involved, a lot of politics. I wrote the program up with my coordinator. We wrote the program up what we want to do. We had to get a focus. Our focus was going to be on operating rooms. We wanted to go on to the operating room and teach and offer exposure to the outside world, all the various professions that are available for career in the operating room in oncology at MD Anderson. That was the focus, not an operating room somewhere else but operating rooms in oncology at MD Anderson. That’s easy to say. Now, you had to make it happen. So we partnered with the head of surgery, the head—the director of operating rooms, and the business managers for operating rooms. At the time, it was Garrett Walsh, Corliss Denman was the administrator, Carla Willis was the director of nursing. And we all sat down with my boss, the head of—the vice president for diversity, and we discussed the project. We got agreement, and we went to work. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Cool.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
And signed a contract with the Houston Chronicle, but guess what? Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Oh, no, what?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
You ready for this? Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Tell me.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
You ready for this? You’re not ready for this. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Probably not.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
You probably want to cut this out. On the day of our contract signing for my diversity program, guess what, I got a knock on my door, “See, the vice president wants to see you.” And I walked in, there sits a lady, I don’t know, I don’t recognize at the table, and I knew instantly what was getting ready to happen because I had done this many times myself. “Your program has been discontinued.” Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. Did you find out why it had been discontinued?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Yeah, we always say funding. You know be careful working with soft money. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Oh, yeah. (laughs)
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
If you’re working on soft money, that’s the danger. And at the time, there was a lot going on with rightsizing, downsizing, budgetary, loss of budget issues. And for your nonrevenue-generating departments, you’re vulnerable. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Well, I actually think this is an important—I mean it’s up to you whether or not you want to leave the story in. I think it’s an important story because, I mean, it doesn’t point bad fingers at anybody, but it tells a story about a reality that happens, how programs stop in institutions. They can be incredibly successful, everything done right, and bang, it doesn’t work for some kind of reason.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Well, I never found out—well, once your program—you are told that your program is disbanded, there’s no point. The Houston Chronicle was the pivo—was the high point of that event, of that partnership, and it was the ultimate product that we left for the community. And 8000 students signed up for the program. It sold out in one week. So that was the last of institutional diversity community partnership, and I think within the next six months to a year, the entire department was disbanded. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Wow. It’s amazing.
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
The Institutional Diversity as a separate department was eliminated, and parts of it was integrated into HR. So for the first 10 years of having an institutional—separate institutional diversity office, I guess the times changed, and that’s what happens. And after that, I went to work— Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. What was the timing on this? So this happened in 2011?
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Yes. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. It was when Dr. DePinho had arrived now—
Cecil C. Brewer, RN, BSN, MS:
Just prior to him getting here. Tacey Ann Rosolowski, Ph.D. Just prior to him getting here so, yeah.
Recommended Citation
Brewer, Cecil C. RN, BSN, MS and Rosolowksi, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 13: A New Challenge in the Office of Institutional Diversity (2010-2011)" (2019). Interview Chapters. 915.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/915
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