Medical School's Hispanic enrollment rising
More students entering from South Texas
"I am pleased to see an increasing number of qualified under-represented minority students, especially those from South Texas, applying for and being accepted to our Medical School," said Dr. James J. Young, Medical School dean. "Despite our many supportive programs, however, we still have a long way to go."
"Part of the Medical School's mission is to provide health care and educational opportunities for residents of South Texas," said Dr. David Jones, anesthesiology, who chairs the Medical School Admissions Committee. "With that in mind, we are actively recruiting qualified applicants in our region."
The 1999 success continues the strong recruiting effort accomplished in 1998, when 24 students from South Texas entered the Medical School. "The admissions process provides special consideration for applicants from medically underserved counties, of which many are in South Texas," Dr. Jones said.
A "career awareness pipeline" links the Health Science Center to potential students throughout the South Texas/Border Region, including the Rio Grande Valley and Mid-Rio Grande Region. The Medical Hispanic Center of Excellence, a federally funded entity within the Health Science Center, sponsors many programs for high school and baccalaureate students to introduce them to biomedical careers and encourage their interest.
One example is the Hispanic Center of Excellence's MCAT Preparatory Program, a series of classes offered in Edinburg and San Antonio for students who plan to take the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) and apply to Medical School. Certain prescribed college courses and the MCAT are basic requirements for admission.
Each year, approximately 200 students are admitted for entering classes in the Medical School. By law Texas residents must constitute at least 90 percent of those classes. Generally, someone who has resided in the state in a non-student capacity for 12 months immediately preceding the time of enrollment is considered a resident.
During the 1998-99 academic year, one of every eight students (122 of 826) in the Medical School was classified as Hispanic. This 14.7 percentage is more than twice the national average for medical schools. Statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Web site show that of 66,900 students enrolled in U.S. medical schools in 1997, only 4,423 were Hispanics (6.6 percent).
Other AAMC statistics reveal that of new entrants to U.S. medical schools in 1998, one of every 16 was classified as Hispanic (total enrollment was 16,170; total Hispanic enrollment was 1,036).
The statistics may be viewed online.
Last year, the Health Science Center received a grant through the "Project 3,000 by 2000" Health Professions Partnership Initiative (HPPI)a project of the AAMC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Dr. Miguel Bedolla directs this five-year, $350,000 award, which supports medical schools' collaborations with regional school systems and colleges to substantially increase the number of Black, Latino and American Indian students interested in pursuing careers in the health professions.
The Health Science Center twice has been included in Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine's list of universities that offer outstanding opportunities to Hispanic students.
In the Medical School, Hispanic students find a large number of teachers who are Mexican Americans. Of 350 Mexican-American physicians in teaching positions nationwide, the Health Science Center employs 41(12 percent of the national total).
The Medical School employs more Mexican-American physician teachers than are found in all state medical schools in California. (The Medical School employs 41 Mexican-American faculty; all private and public medical schools in California employ 45.)
Students from diverse backgrounds excel at HSC
Like gender or place of birth, ethnicity does not determine whether or not a person will succeed in medical school. The things that matter most are intelligence, preparation, aptitude and desire.First-year medical student Manuel Ybarra grew up in Harlingen in the Rio Grande Valley and plans to return there someday. "My number one choice, when I finish my medical residency and fellowships, is to practice in Harlingen or the area," he said. "I intend to make a difference."
Ybarra, 24, entered the Medical School last fall and logged a perfect 4.0 grade point average his first semester. A graduate of St. Mary's University's pre-med program, he was nervous--but ready--to enter Medical School. "You get here, you do well and you realize everyone is the same," he said. "Each of us has the same challenge and we help each other to overcome it."
San Antonio's Cyndi Velasquez, second-year medical student, attended Clark High School and The University of the Incarnate Word. She headed committees preparing for the state conference of the Texas Association of Latin American Medical Students (TALAMS).
"It's amazing to look around our class and see students from Yale and Harvard," she said. "I went to Incarnate Word here and my parents came to every soccer game, while some of my classmates went to places like Stanford. But we're all in the same school now, so it doesn't matter."
Ybarra's road to Medical School began at "Med High"--the colloquial name for the South Texas High School for the Health Professions, where he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class. The magnet school in Mercedes attracts students from throughout the Valley and prepares them for future biomedical studies.
He matriculated at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, where he graduated from the pre-med program in the spring of 1997. During his senior year at St. Mary's, he was selected for the Biomedical Research Training Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and spent 18 months there.
"I shadowed a doctor at Case who said, 'You're fortunate to be where you are. Everything worked in your favor growing up. Make sure that on your way to the top, you keep one hand behind you to pull up someone else.' That is now my philosophy, too, to reach out to help others," Ybarra said.
He is impressed with the Medical School's efforts to increase the number of students from the South Texas/Border Region who return to practice there after graduation. Ybarra sees himself as part of the solution for that historically medically underserved area.
One of 38 Hispanic students admitted to the Medical School in 1998 and one of 24 incoming students that year from the South Texas/Border Region, he is excited that the 1999 entry group of 42 Hispanics/22 South Texans includes his Med High and St. Mary's classmate, Luciano Vargas. Vargas is from Carrizo Springs in Dimmitt County, east of Eagle Pass and north of Laredo.
Twelve Hispanics entered the Medical School in 1997, the year after the Hopwood decision ended affirmative action for admission to the state's universities. Velasquez was one of them. She is among a class that has posted extremely high scores in gross anatomy and biochemistry.
"The 1997 class was a watershed, but thanks to Dr. David Jones (chair of the Medical School Admissions Committee) and his unbelievable commitment to making a difference--to recruiting talented and qualified Hispanic applicants to our schoolwe have rebounded in a very short time," said Dr. Sylvia Fernandez. She is director of special programs at the Health Science Center.
The Health Science Center is among the nation's leaders in training Hispanic physicians and has been committed to this end for a quarter-century. The dip in enrollment caused by Hopwood has been overcome. The Medical School enrolled 36 Hispanic students in 1995, 38 in 1998 and 42 this year.
Velasquez and Ybarra represent the high-quality students who have been accepted to Medical School. "I tell students, 'Just be yourself; you are who you are,'" Dr. Fernandez said. "'You got here because you have the same qualifications that all 200 of your classmates had. Nobody gave you anything; you earned it. You competed with 3,000 other applicants to get here, and you made it because you have what it takes.'"
"School is so draining; the pressure is so great," Velasquez said. "It comes down to your own determination to get where you want to go. You have to meet your own goals."
In the Medical School, as in life, that's true for people of all backgrounds.
The lot will replace a similar-sized Datapoint Drive parking lot used temporarily to accommodate student vehicles during the earliest phase of campus parking
garage construction.
The new lot is near the Allied Health/Research and McDermott Clinical Science buildings. It is one-quarter mile from the U.S. Post Office on the same side of
Medical Drive as the post office. The University Police Department has
designated the new parking area "Lot
17."
Shuttle service for students from the new lot to the 7703 Floyd Curl campus will start at 6 a.m. April 5.
The Dental School Faculty Assembly is seeking nominees for the 1999 Dental School Teaching Awards. The deadline for submission of nominations is Friday, April 23.
Faculty who teach dental students and/or postdoctoral students can be nominated by students, residents, faculty peers and administrators. The five nomination
categories are: course director, lecturer, basic science or preclinical laboratory instructor, clinical instructor and postdoctoral educator.
Nomination forms are available from Dr. Frank Weaker, associate
professor in the Department of Cellular & Structural Biology; the Dental Dean's Office; class presidents; and Dental School departments.
For more information, contact Dr. Weaker at ext. 3849 or by e-mail at
<weaker@uthscsa.edu>.
The old software includes a host of programs for statistics and mathematics, such as Axum 1.02, 2.0 and 3.0; BMDP Solo 3.1 (DOS only); Egret 0.06, 0.09.1 and
0.010.1; MathCad 1.1, 2.5 and 4.0; Stata 3.1 and 4.0; and more.
Also available: a programming language software, Fortran 4.0; a word processing software, Ami Pro 3.0 (for Windows); and software for an operating system, DRDOS 6.0.
Interested individuals may call Janis Winn at ext. 5930 or send e-mail to
<winn@uthscsa.edu>.
Persons who use POP, short for "Post Office Protocol," on the Health Science Center's central mail server can view their mail at a designated Web site by entering their
user name and password. There are about 6,000 POP mail users at the Health Science Center. Most of them use the Eudora e-mail program.
"Our goal has been to develop a way for mobile
people to easily get their e-mail, whether they are on campus or not," said Dr. Frank Stafford, director of the Computing Resources Department, which introduced the WebMail system in February.
Mobile users no longer must use a computer that is configured to access their personal e-mail account. Instead, they can read their e-mail with a Web browser at any
off-campus site. Students on campus frequently use the public computers provided at the Briscoe Library because they have no personal computer. They keep an e-mail
program such as Eudora on a floppy diskette and insert it for use on a public computer.
"With the students carrying them around, the floppies get worn and frequently get jammed in the computers. The library's employees pried out so many jammed
diskettes that last year we decorated our Christmas tree with the metal casings from damaged floppies," said Melissa DeSantis, the library's microcomputer services coordinator.
Students and Health Science Center personnel as close as University Hospital and the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, Audie Murphy Division, also have
been unable to access e-mail because of network
configuration issues. They now are able to view
e-mail using Web-connected computers at the hospitals.
"This service is designed for our people who are mobile or don't have a personal computer. Under normal circumstances, the traditional POP-mail programs such as
Eudora are much more versatile than WebMail," Dr. Stafford said.
POP mail users can use the system
online.
More information is available from the Computing Resources Triage
Desk, ext. 2069, or from the staff on the second floor of the Briscoe
Library.
(Submitted by Jim Barrett, Computing Resources Department)
Participants must be between 18 and 65 years of age and in good general health. They must have at least 16 teeth and all six of their lower front teeth.
Volunteers will be paid $70 and receive a professional dental cleaning. Dr. Vincent Segreto, professor of dental diagnostic science, is the principal investigator.
For more information, call Teri at ext. 6335.
The theme for this year's EXPO is "Accessing and Using Electronic Information." The event will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the second floor of the library.
Presentations will include:
Stop by the exhibits for demonstrations, information and door prizes. Exhibitors will include Apple Computer; EndNote/Niles Software; HETCAT (Health
Education Training Centers Alliance of Texas); National Network of Libraries of Medicine - South Central Region; SimEndo I: Multimedia Interactive Endodontic Educational
Software; and the Macintosh Users Group.
The following Health Science Center departments will be represented: the Bookstore/Computer Store, the Center for Distance Learning and Telehealth, Instrumentation Services, the Briscoe Library and
the Office of Educational Resources.
For a complete schedule and more information, visit the EXPO '99
Web
site.
The mission of this program is to support research that seeks to reduce the incidence of breast cancer, increases survival rates for patients and improves the quality of life
for those diagnosed with breast cancer. Through the
program, DoD will fund research in the cancer biology, diagnosis, etiology, prevention, supportive care and therapy fields.
Submissions for the program are due by June 2, with the exception of clinical translation research (CTR) and
collaborative clinical translation research
(C-CTR). Pre-proposals are due by April 7 with full proposals due by July 28.
For more information on the program, visit the BCRP
Web site.
Apple selected the Health Science Center as a host site for Tech Updates in Education, which runs from 9 a.m. until noon in lecture hall 3.102B.
At the regular noon meeting, Dr. Terry Mikiten, associate dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, will present "FileMaker Pro for Beginners." The
hour-long presentation also will be in 3.102B.
Get the answers to these questions and others by participating in the first National Alcohol Screening Day (NASD) on Thursday, April 8. The Department of
Psychiatry, Division of Alcohol & Drug Addiction, is offering free, anonymous screenings for alcohol problems as part of NASD from 4 to 8 p.m. at the department's new
Treatment Research Center in the McDermott Building. The screening includes a written self-test and discussion of the confidential results with a health professional, all at no cost.
Video presentations and literature covering all aspects of alcohol problems, including alcohol dependence, alcohol abuse and risky drinking, will be available.
The program is designed to educate the public and offer a way to seek help for persons struggling with alcohol-related problems. Referrals can be made for further help.
National Alcohol Screening Day is being held in conjunction with National Alcohol Awareness Month. NASD is a joint project of the National Institute on Alcohol
Abuse & Alcoholism and the National Mental Illness Screening Project. More than 2,000 sites across the country are participating in NASD.
The Treatment Research Center is the site of ongoing research studies
conducted in alcohol and drug addiction and offers free drug and alcohol treatment to adults as part
of those research studies. For more information on
NASD or the research studies, call ext. 8229.
An official Fiesta San Antonio event, Fiesta de Tejas lasts from 5 p.m. to midnight. It is free for children 12 and under and adults 65 or older. For everyone else, tickets
are $4 in advance and $6 at the gate. Free parking will be available.
Tickets are on sale at the Health Science Center Bookstore, the public affairs office for the Audie Murphy Division of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System,
and through the Fiesta Commission.
Fiesta de Tejas features:
Live entertainment will include the folk/rock/country sounds of the Toman Brothers, the soothing pop/rock/oldies strains of Morning, the toe-tappin'
country/bluegrass strumming of the Lone Star Pickers and the spicy Tejano beat of La Razza.
In the newly dubbed Family Courtyard, children and parents will enjoy traditional dancing cloggers, a karate demonstration, a magic act, and feats by dancers and
clowns. Acts include the Fire on the Mountain Cloggers, the Rising Stars of Texas
Hip Hop, and singer Judy Cotton.
Booths for the youngsters will include face painting, two Moon Walks (one for younger children) and the dunking contest.
Employees are invited to experience Fiesta de Tejas as a volunteer. Contact Mary Yanes at ext. 2205 or at
<yanes@uthscsa.edu>. Volunteers get a free ticket for a
two-hour shift.
For the Fiesta scoop, visit the official
World-Wide Web site.
Questions about Fiesta de Tejas may be directed to Alan Miller,
Fiesta de Tejas Committee, at <milleraa@uthscsa.edu>.
Held in more than 98 cities across the country, the event includes a 5K run/walk and a 3K family fun walk. The San Antonio event begins with a registration at 6:45 a.m.
at the newly renovated Sunset Station and ends with an award ceremony at 9:45 a.m.
Race participants will include more than 300 breast cancer survivors. Runners and walkers will follow a route through downtown San Antonio past the Alamo and
the Tower of the Americas.
The cost for participants ranges from $15 for teams to $22 for competitive racers if paid before April 8. The cost the day of the race is $20 for teams and $25 for all
other participants. The registration fee includes a T-shirt, refreshments and a bag of "goodies."
Last year's first Race for the Cure in San Antonio raised $90,000. This year the event is expected to raise more than $100,000, with 75 percent of funding staying in
the area, going toward breast cancer education, screening and treatments for San Antonians who cannot afford medical care. Twenty-five percent of the money raised will go
to support the Komen Foundation's National Research and Grant Program.
The race honors those who have fought breast cancer. "The race will be a celebration of hope, courage and support," said Marylynn Hinde, race chair for San Antonio.
For more information on the Race for the Cure, contact race organizers
at 297-1198.
The $10 registration fee includes lunch and must be submitted by Wednesday, April 7. To register or for more information, call Rosie Marti, Department of Medicine,
at ext. 4978.
"Do You Want to Learn How to Write Winning Grants?" will be
presented by Drs. Stephen Russell and David Morrison, federally funded
investigators who are experts in teaching investigators how to write
winning grants. They have offered similar workshops at more than 40
institutions and at several regional and national meetings.
Lot 17 opens April 5 on Medical Drive
At 6 a.m. Monday, April 5, a new 400-space parking lot at Medical Drive and Von Scheele Street will open to Health Science Center students.
Briefly
UTHSCSA welcome
Dr. John P. Howe, III, president, (left) greets
10th-grader Christopher Saenz and Dr. Mario Ramirez,
vice president for South Texas/Border Initiatives,
during a visit to the
Health Science Center by students and teachers with
the MED-ED Program, which introduces youngsters to
bioscience career prospects.
Applause
Teaching Excellence nominations due
Items available for giveaway
Older-version software, dot-matrix printer paper (including a box of wide carbon paper) and a Canon bubble jet printer sheet feeder are among the items ready to be
given away by the School of Public Health office.
Campus e-mail users now have WebMail option
Thousands of Health Science Center POP e-mail users who are away from their home or office location now can check their mail using the World-Wide Web.
Volunteers sought for chewing gum/toothpaste study
Volunteers are needed for a 12-week chewing gum/toothpaste study to be conducted in the Dental School.
Web-mail, digital copyrights
World Wide Web-based e-mail, copyright law in the digital age, and
use of EndNote to manage reference files are just a few of the topics to be presented at the
Briscoe Library's annual Technology EXPO on Thursday, April 15.
among Briscoe Library
EXPO topics
DoD proposals due
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) recently released Fiscal Year 1999 program information and submission guidelines for the DoD Breast Cancer Research
Program (BCRP).
Mac Users Group plans two events
The Macintosh Users Group will host "Tech Updates in Education," a national tour presentation, on Wednesday, April 7. The group's regular monthly meeting will
follow the special presentation.
The house is open
Instrumentation Services' Tim Hite shows an electronic cardiac rhythm
teaching model to Debbie Etter (center) and Helen Cavazos,
Institutional Review Board. The IRB
staff members visited the 1999 Instrumentation Open House held March
17 in instrumentation's first- and second-floor divisions. One new
feature was the Pipet Center, which will
offer certified service of laboratory equipment.
Making the Rounds
Psychiatry participates in
How many drinks must be consumed before one is "binge drinking"? How do you know if you or a friend has a drinking problem? Why can some people handle
more alcohol than others? Where can you go for help?
National Alcohol Screening Day
April 8
Viva Fiesta!
The best way to kick off San Antonio's Fiesta Week is at the Health Science Center's 15th Annual Fiesta de Tejas, set for Friday, April 16, in the Medical School
fountain/courtyard area.
HSC's annual event
only two weeks away
Komen Foundation's Race for the Cure
The race to beat cancer continues as more than 5,000 men, women and children join the fight on April 10 when they participate in the Susan G. Komen Breast
Cancer Foundation's San Antonio Race for the Cure.
launches April 10
Grant workshop set
Writing winning grants is the subject of a workshop to be offered from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 17, in lecture hall 3.104A.