Discover a revolution in medical education as Dr. Brigham Willis of the UT Tyler School of Medicine shares milestones achieved by this new medical hub, from the inaugural class’s successful first year to the fully-funded tuition for the second class of 40 students, all with deep roots in East Texas.
Willis highlights the collective force of community support and the collaborative spirit that has propelled the UT Tyler School of Medicine from concept to reality. Reflecting on the profound personal inspiration from being part of such a venture, he invites the public to engage directly with the school’s ongoing evolution. From participating in simulated patient programs to volunteer opportunities, community involvement plays an integral role in nurturing the continued growth of this institution.
Transcript
LANDESS:
The opening of the new UT Tyler School of Medicine facility is just over a year away, and the inaugural class of 40 has completed its first year of studies. I’m Mike Landess. So how about class number two and other projects underway? UT Tyler Radio Connects with founding dean Dr. Brigham Willis to find out what is the makeup of the next class for the School of Medicine?
WILLIS:
Well, thanks for having me, Mike. Great to be back. I’m very excited to talk about the school and the incredible progress since I was here last. The second class is picked. We’re actually going to be able to announce it in the next couple of weeks, actually our final class roster. The students have the ability to change up till that point. But we have an incredible class of 40 students with deep East Texas roots, just like the first class, so we’re very excited.
LANDESS:
So tell me a little bit about this class. Is it paid for, like the inaugural class?
WILLIS:
Yes, we’re incredibly lucky to get a second donor to pay for tuition and fees for the second class for all 4 years. So incredibly generous. That’s the kind of support we’ve been very fortunate to receive across the communities — the support of our students and our school.
LANDESS:
This is such a huge thing for East Texas in so many ways because of the focus of how you’re looking at what these classes will do as they graduate, and that they stay, that they are East Texas-centric, for lack of a better term.
WILLIS:
That’s exactly right, and that’s our entire mission. That’s why the school was created was to create health care workforce and medical professionals for East Texas. So we’re trying to select students who grew up in the area, or have some deep ties to the area, are committed to make things better here. And then, after their medical school journey is complete, we have really dramatically increased our residency program complement. We had about four programs, three to four programs about 3-4 years ago. Now we’re up to 20. We’ve crossed the 20 mark this year and hope to be at around 25 next year. We have over 200 residents we’re currently training, and so we need to provide that opportunity for the students to continue training in East Texas when they finish and then eventually practice here.
LANDESS:
How many people applied for that second class?
WILLIS:
Well, it was a lot. There were 6,000 initial applications.
LANDESS: Six thousand?
WILLIS: Yes, it’s a little inflated. About 2,600 fully completed applications for the second class of 40. So, it is just inspiring to see the excitement about still becoming a medical professional. Despite all the challenges you hear about in the media, it’s still, in my opinion, the best job you could possibly have on earth. You’re helping people, you’re really doing good in your community, and we see that with the application numbers, that students are excited to become physicians, and it allows us to pick just incredible human beings to be physicians for our school.
LANDESS:
One of the things that I’ve been impressed by, in terms of your approach when you came in as the founding dean, was that you have a real hands-on, down-to-earth kind of approach, as a for instance, that the classes have to become certified EMTs. I mean and ride along on the truck and be functional. They can save a life right off the bat.
WILLIS:
We try to focus the entire curriculum on that. We don’t want to be ivory tower, learn this knowledge and don’t be able to apply it. So our students, like you said, become EMTs in the first few weeks of their experience. They have immediate clinical exposure and develop clinical skills from day one of medical school. So, we don’t want them just learning a bunch of facts and not being able to use those to help people. So we really try to provide them with the experiences and the training immediately to be of benefit to the community. They’re already going out into free clinics and throughout the community and really making a difference, and we want to make sure that continues.
LANDESS:
That connection to community, of course, is another way of making sure that they want to stay here in East Texas, that they are attached as it were.
WILLIS:
Absolutely. As you know, once you meet the people in East Texas, you never want to leave.
LANDESS:
Yeah, that’s absolutely true.
When we last spoke to you in June of 2023, we talked about a variety of things that were going on. What kinds of accomplishments will have taken place by June of 2024?
WILLIS:
Man, there’s so many different things. If you look at it by mission area, you know the student complement will have obviously completed their first year with amazing success. Their academics have been really impressive. They’re completing research projects, they’re doing community projects. They’re really getting engaged across the board, so we’re really proud of their success. We have them in leadership and national organizations, so really, really amazing stuff.
WILLIS:
Graduate medical education again will be moving across the 20-program threshold, which is absolutely amazing to think about from just a few years ago, to be able to do that with our partners at UT Health East Texas and our other clinical partners throughout the region. Research has been incredibly successful over the last year as well. We have multiple new researchers with new national funding from the NIH and other organizations. So pushing the boundaries of knowledge creation as well throughout the medical school. And then community — we continue to involve everything we do throughout the community and enhancing community programs. We’re about to release the health status report for mental health for East Texas. We’re beginning work on the new 2026. We’re already starting now, health status report for the entire region. So we just continue to try to strive for excellence in all our mission areas.
LANDESS:
And that mental health aspect. On May 7, there was an event that took place all across East Texas inviting people to come to the Brookshire Center and to work with the Andrews Center and, of course, The University of Texas at Tyler. I’m wondering how much of a focus is that going to be? I mean, that’s been identified as a terribly important part of what we need to be thinking about as we move forward.
WILLIS:
Yeah, it’s a focus throughout our school and across our mission. We have a community advisory board that I would encourage as much participation if people are interested, where we take input and ideas from the community about what we should be doing with our school and our curriculum and our research. And that was identified as the number one priority by our community itself. So our incredible psychiatry chair, Dr. (Cheryl) McCullumsmith, has been really pushing our efforts in that area. We have many new research projects, new residencies and fellowships. We just got approved for a forensic psychiatry program, which is fairly unique. We have programs in most mission areas for training. So we’re trying to train workforce.
WILLIS:
We’re partnering with our health systems to establish multiple new clinical care sites, both clinics and inpatient capacity. So, and then obviously working with the community, like you said, with the health summit doing the report, working with all the organizations focused on mental health, and then in our curriculum, we actually have behavioral health integrated throughout the entire curriculum. So all of our students are going to be well-trained in the aspects of behavioral health by the time they finish — every single student, not just ones who are interested in it. And I think that’s critical because if you look at East Texas, so many rural populations. They don’t have a psychiatrist in their town or their area, and their first point of contact for behavioral health concerns is their primary care physician. So we want all of our students to have the core competencies to be able to take care of those patients, obviously then refer for specialty needs, but to have that core competency in their repertoire.
LANDESS:
Now, a couple of newsworthy items in recent months include the Pathways Explorer mobile unit. Share with us what that is and why it’s important.
WILLIS:
Oh, that was an incredible event. So we again see our mission as integrating with the community throughout the entire region, and so what we need to do is inspire kids throughout East Texas to become physicians. And so we came up with this idea for this school bus. We like to call it the Pathways Explorer unit, but it’s a modified bus that’s going to allow kids anywhere in East Texas to experience what it’s like to become a doctor, be a doctor and take care of patients. So the bus — it opens up. The kids can go in and work with anatomical models, look at simulated patient mannequins, listen to their heart sounds. Do chest compressions, really save a life, you know. And then at the end, they’ll get a little white coat so they can envision themselves becoming a doctor. And then we connect them with the resources to how do you learn the STEM field? How do you get trained so you can go to college, so you can go to our medical school, or become any kind of health professional? So I just see that as critical.
WILLIS:
Coming from a small town myself, when you don’t have physicians in your family or in your community, it becomes nearly impossible to see the path. How would I get there? So, to give them that idea, even at kindergarten level, that you can be a doctor, we’re here to show you how. I think it’s going to be really powerful.
LANDESS: It’s going to go all around East Texas?
WILLIS: Yes, that’s the idea. So we’re already engaging with the school districts all throughout the region. And so, anyone listening, if you have a school or a class where you want us to come, we’ll come do a demonstration, an interactive event, so the kids get inspired.
LANDESS: So they got a white coat. Do they get a stethoscope, too?
WILLIS:
I’m not sure we can give everybody one, but they will have them there, and they can listen to each other and do that.
LANDESS:
I’m just teasing of course. A couple of newsworthy items, as we mentioned, and one of them is the recently announced partnership with the U.S. Dermatology Partners in a UT Tyler School of Medicine Dermatology department. Tell us more about that.
WILLIS:
Yeah, that’s inspiring to me because we’ve had a number of occasions like this where really private groups of physicians came to us interested in becoming part of the mission of our school. And that’s just a wonderful thing because they see how important it is to educate the next generation, both for the community and for their practice and practices across East Texas. So they engaged with us, and we were more than proud to pull them in and form a department of Dermatology around their practice. Incredible opportunity for our students to be able to train in dermatology both as students and residents here right here in East Texas. So we were really pleased with that, yeah.
LANDESS:
Now, are there any other possible programs with other, you talked about that doctors are coming to you. Any other ones in the works?
WILLIS: There are. It’s hard to talk about specific ones, but yes, we have many endeavors with private groups in a variety of fields at this point.
LANDESS:
Ongoing.
WILLIS: That’s right.
LANDESS: OK. All right. Now, what are you most proud of so far as the founding dean of the School of Medicine?
WILLIS:
What am I most? There’s so many things, Mike. It’s difficult. But I think the growth and the fact that we’ve been able to address our mission in the way that I thought we were going to be able to, recruiting kids from East Texas, building programs right here. So right now, you can grow up and go to school from kindergarten through college, through medical school, through residency, all the way through fellowship in almost every field of need and stay right here in East Texas. And the fact that we’ve been able to create that infrastructure, both from physical infrastructure, from the building to curricula, to programs, to recruiting doctors.
WILLIS:
It’s the most inspiring thing I’ve ever done or seen to be a part of and to have that community support and see it become a reality. I know it’s a very general answer, but the way all of that came together has been absolutely incredible.
LANDESS:
Any final thoughts you’d like to share?
WILLIS:
No, just I would love for people to stay engaged. We have multiple ways that you can become engaged with the school, from our simulated patient programs to volunteering opportunities, and we welcome the community in every aspect.
LANDESS:
Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with Dr. Brigham Willis, founding dean of the UT Tyler School of Medicine. For UT Tyler Radio News, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
