I would like to thank everyone who attended the HSC Convocation on January 24 th . It was a nice event and I thought it went very well. Several faculty and staff members from the COM were acknowledged for their achievements including the following: Marie Parmer - Presidential Award for Excellence in Administrative Support; College of Medicine ¨C Presidential Award for Excellence in Community Outreach; Dr. Gary McCord - Piper Award; Dr. J ose Pliego ¨C Distinguished Teaching Award (clinical); and Dr. Van Wilson ¨C Distinguished Teaching Award (basic science).

The Board of Regents approved our request for expansion to increase class size to 200 students. As I explained in my memo, this is a long-term process and will involve the development of two four-year campuses, one in College Station and one in Temple. It will involve a thoughtful and deliberate planning process which began with the Basic Science Department realignment, and will continue next week with the curriculum retreat. We will discuss the implications of this decision and I will answer any of your questions and lay out a general plan as we move forward.

Congratulations are in order for Dr. Rod McCallum who was officially approved by the Board of Regents last week to become the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Health Science Center. I wish him the best and look forward to working with him in his new role.

Mini Medical School is off to a rousing start this year. We have 140 people signed up for each session. Dr. Rajesh Miranda gave a lecture on stem cells the first session, and Dr. Don DiPette gave a lecture on hypertension this past week. They were both very well-received and the participants asked several questions following the lectures. There are four more sessions this month and I expect an enthusiastic crowd at each one.

The Curriculum Retreat is scheduled for February 10-11 in Temple. The purpose of this retreat is to emerge with a curricular model to be implemented over the next 18 months. I am confident that we will achieve our goal and be ready to roll out the new curriculum.

Also of note, we wish farewell to Lydia Mousner, Business Administrator in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine. Lydia has been a dedicated employee during her 26 years at the college and she will be greatly missed.

Former A&M Regent Endows Scholarship at College of Medicine

Former Texas A&M University Regent and medical building namesake Joe Reynolds and his wife Susie have endowed the Sue and Joe H. Reynolds Endowed Scholarship Fund at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. The Reynolds' $100,000 gift is designed to assist students defer the cost of their medical education.

"Mr. Reynolds has been a long-time supporter and champion of the College of Medicine and we are honored that he and his wife chose to establish an endowed scholarship fund for our students," College of Medicine Dean Christopher C. Colenda, M.D. said. "Because of their generous gift, we are able to assist medical students as they receive their education and go on to become caring, compassionate physicians."

Aggie Grad Establishes College of Medicine Endowed Scholarship

Ted E. Saba '41 of Tyler has donated $25,000 to establish the Ted '41 and Dee Saba Endowed Scholarship Fund for medical students at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

"We are extremely grateful to Mr. Saba for his generous gift," College of Medicine Dean Christopher C. Colenda, M.D. said. "Mr. Saba's scholarship will continue to financially help medical students for years to come. We are honored that such a loyal Aggie would choose to support 'Aggie Docs' at the College of Medicine."

Admissions Update

The Admissions Committee hosted the last group of prospective students Thursday, January 5. Over the course of the last several months, the committee conducted interviews with 714 students, which was three percent more than last year. The average GPA of the interviewees was 3.7 and their average MCAT score was a 29.5. The overall applicant pool was up six percent from last year, while secondary applications to the College of Medicine increased three percent. Underrepresented minority student applications were also up, and the committee interviewed 12 M.D./Ph.D. candidates for admission.

Gold Honor Society Chapter Named For Montgomery

The Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society chapter at the A&M College of Medicine was recently named after John L. Montgomery, M.D. The John L. Montgomery M.D. chapter of the Arnold Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society recognizes A&M medical students who exemplify integrity, compassion, altruism, respect, empathy and service. Dr. Montgomery is the past president of the Scott & White Clinic Board, Chairman of the Department of Radiology Scott and White and Professor of Radiology at the College of Medicine.

Dr. Montgomery's personal and professional life have modeled all that is good in medicine. He has taught at Scott & White and the College of Medicine for more than 25 years, serving as mentor and role model to all around him. Named in honor of him, the honor society will be a source of pride and inspiration for our young physicians. The society was endowed in Dr. Montgomery's name by friends and colleagues. Please contact Nancy Birdwell in the Scott & White Development Office if you wish to make a contribution in Dr. Montgomery's honor.

Young Featured for PTSD Study at Waco VA

Keith A. Young, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, will be heading up a project to study post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans at the Waco VA. The Department of Psychiatry's Vice Chair for Research at the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System (CTVHCS), Dr. Young received the initial $3 million in funding for the study from Congress.

For more on this story, check out the feature about Dr. Young and his work that was published in the Waco Tribune-Herald Tuesday, January 10.

DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES IN MEDICINE

The Department of Humanities in Medicine and the Scott & White Ethics Committee will be hosting the ¡®Medicine and Humanities Consultation' Monday, February 20. This is a faculty development conference which will be held from 1-6 p.m. at the Halley House in Salado. The wrap-up dinner session will be at the Stagecoach Inn. The Consultation will engage clinicians of medicine and academic humanists in an in-depth exposure to "Images of the Healer In an Age of Turnstile Medicine".

The afternoon will be spent in informal discussion led by invited guest William F. May as the facilitator for the February Consultation. To quote Dr. May, "From its inception (app. 1970), contemporary medical ethics has dealt chiefly with dilemmas or quandaries that doctors face (should I tell the truth or not? should I pull the plug or not?). However, beneath such headliner quandaries lurk contending images for understanding the healer's identity (is the physician chiefly a parent? a technician? a fighter? a teacher?). The question, "what shall I do?" often rests on the deeper question, "who or what shall I be?" If the doctor chiefly defines himself or herself as a fighter against disease and death, then pulling the plug on the patient also pulls the plug on the doctor's core identity".

If you would like more information about the Consultations or would like to attend the Consultation please contact Elaine Wright at eswright@medicine.tamhsc.edu.

Medical Ethics Grand Rounds

The Departments of Humanities in Medicine and Internal Medicine will present the Medical Ethics Grand Rounds in Temple on February 20 from 12-1 p.m. in the Sid Richardson Auditorium at Scott & White. The following day, February 21, the Medical Ethics Grand Rounds will be in College Station in Lecture Hall 1 in the Reynolds Medical Building also from 12-1 p.m. The speaker for both lectures will be William F. May, Ph. D. and his topic of discussion will be "Images of the Healer". The Medical Ethics Grand Rounds are hosted by the Department of Humanities sponsored by a grant from the Texas Medical Foundation.

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE

Kathryn Kotrla, M.D.

Dr. Phil Antunes was awarded the Irma Bland award for Excellence in Teaching Psychiatry Residents from the American Psychiatry Association. This is a nationally competitive award, and Dr. Antunes will be recognized for this wonderful achievement at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Toronto. Additionally, Dr. Antunes has consistently received Psychiatry's departmental medical student teaching award, and is loved by the medical students as well as the residents. This award reflects on the nationally recognized quality of teaching we provide for our residents and medical students.

OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Kimberly van Walsum and Dr. Jose F. Pliego presented a workshop at the International Meeting on Medical Simulation January 16 in San Diego. The title of the workshop was a "Systematic Standardized Approach to Raising Ob/Gyn Resident Baseline CREOG Competencies through Clinical Simulation." The objective of the workshop was to demonstrate an innovated way to expose undergraduate and graduate learners to the most common obstetrical emergencies and intrapartum fetal heart-rate monitoring.

The workshop was presented to a world wide audience using an innovative combination of technologies, and participants had an opportunity to experience a full high-fidelity simulation of obstetrical emergencies. The workshop also included standardized instruments and debriefing guidelines to give feedback to Ob/Gyn residents after their performance. Optimal management of high-risk, low-frequency critical events and real clinical settings requires practice and training, and clinical simulation provides this opportunity for our learners.

Central Texas Conference on Clinical Simulation

The first interactive Central Texas Conference on Clinical Simulation will be held February 24-25 at the Temple College Health Sciences Building. The topic of the conference is "Lessons from Our First Two Years" . The Director for this meeting is Kimberly van Walsum, Ph.D., M.Ed. and Co-Director is Dr. Jose F. Pliego. Other faculty participating in the workshop are Dr. Paul Ogden, Dr. Lauren Cobbs, Martha Howell, M.Ed. and Neil Coker, BS, EMT-P .

The objectives for the workshop are:

• Understand educational theories of learning as applied to simulation in healthcare education
• Understand the role of simulation in teaching and learning in medicine and health care professions
• Learn techniques for writing simulation scenarios and integrating high fidelity patient simulators into healthcare curricula
• Experience live participation and reflective learning in high fidelity clinical simulation including:
• setting up and managing a state of the art simulation center
• live participation in simulations and debriefing of acute healthcare scenarios, ethical scenarios, and humanities/professionalism scenarios
• live participation in debriefing of high fidelity simulation

This meeting has been designated for a maximum of 9.75 Category 1 credits through the AMA Physician Recognition Award. The response so far has been overwhelming and registration is now closed, but organizers are keeping a waiting list and plan to repeat this CME activity in the future.

FACULTY

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Steve Allen, M.D., Ob/Gyn Residency Program Director at Scott & White will be presenting "Medical malpractice claims two years before and after ACGME duty hours restrictions" at the 2006 Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology ( CREOG) and Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics ( APGO) Annual Meeting, March 2-5 in Orlando. Other authors are: Vicki Clark, RN, MBA, CPHQ, CPHRM, Risk Prevention Coordinator; Lisa Haven-Cortes, RN, MSN, JD; and Tom Kuehl, Ph.D.

RESEARCH

Microbial and Molecular Pathogenesis

Dr. McMurray received an Award Notice for a grant of $42,000 from the Kinki-Chou Chest Medical Center in Osaka, Japan. The project is entitled "Prime-boost vaccination using HVJ(N)/HSP65DNA+IL-12DNA and BCG vaccines to induce strong protective immunity in a guinea pig model of pulmonary tuberculosis". This is part of a continuing collaboration with Dr. Masaji Okada.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Microbial and Molecular Pathogenesis

Cho, H and McMurray, DN. Neutralization of tumor necrosis factor alpha suppresses antigen-specific type 1 cytokine responses and reverses the inhibition of mycobacterial survival in cocultures of immune guinea pig T lymphocytes and infected macrophages. Infect Immun 73:8437-8441 (2005).

Clayton, F, Pysher, TJ, Lou, R, Kohan, DE, Denkers, ND, Tesh, VL, Taylor, Jr., FB and Siegler, RL. Lipopolysaccharide upregulates renal Shiga toxin receptors in a primate model of hemolytic uremic syndrome. American Journal of Nephrology 25 :536-541 (2005).

Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics

Metz, RP, Qu, X, Laffin, B, Earnest, D, and Porter, WW. Circadian clock and cell cycle gene expression in mouse mammary epithelial cells and in the developing mouse mammary gland. Devel. Dynamics 235: 263-271 (2006).

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DATES TO REMEMBER

February 9: OED Faculty Development Seminar, Room 160 in C.S., 407C in Temple; 12 p.m.
February 9: Mini-Medical School Session #4 with Stephen Crouse, Ph.D., Lecture Hall 1, 6 p.m.
February 10-11: Curriculum Retreat, Hilton Garden Inn, Temple
February 15: Faculty Research Colloquium, Mayborn Auditorium in Temple; simulcast to Lecture Hall 1 in C.S., 5 p.m.
February 16: Mini-Medical School Session #5 with Gill Naul, M.D., Lecture Hall 1, 6 p.m.
February 23: Mini-Medical School Session #6 with Charles Sanders, M.D., Lecture Hall 1, 6 p.m.
March 3: Dean's Staff Retreat, Briarcrest Country Club
March 13-17: Spring Break


Christopher C. Colenda, M.D., M.P.H.
Dean, College of Medicine
The Texas A&M Health Science Center
147 Joe H. Reynolds Medical Building
College Station, TX 77843-1114
Phone: 979-845-3431
Fax: 979-847-8663
Email: colenda@medicine.tamhsc.edu