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Texas
Gamma Chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha
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History
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History
of UT Southwestern Medical School
In 1939, a group of prominent Dallas business
leaders created Southwestern Medical Foundation to collect and distribute
funds for medical education and research. They hoped to help grow
the existing medical school in Dallas, Baylor College of Medicine,
into a first-class institution. But in 1943, Baylor University moved
its medical school from Dallas to Houston, and to fill the void
the Southwestern Medical Foundation created the private medical
school Southwestern Medical College. Many of Baylor's faculty and
its upper level students stayed at Southwestern, which focused its
training program at Parkland Hospital. At the time, Southwestern
Medical College occupied nine prefabricated barracks at 2211 Oak
Lawn, known as "the Shacks." Across the street, at the
corner of Oak Lawn and Maple, was the original Parkland Hospital,
then a brick building. In March of 1944, as part of a war-accelerated
training program, Southwestern graduated its first sixty-one physicians.
By 1949, the medical college had graduated 359 students. To attain
the financial support necessary for the medical college to achieve
excellence, Southwestern became the second state-supported medical
school in Texas, becoming a part of the University of Texas under
the name Southwestern Medical School. In 1955, the medical school
moved to its present campus site on Harry Hines Boulevard, next
to the newly built Parkland Memorial Hospital. As the scope of training
at Southwestern has expanded, its name has as well. In 1987, it
was changed to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
at Dallas, to include UT Southwestern Medical School, UT Southwestern
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and UT Southwestern Allied
Health Sciences School. Since its creation, the medical school has
grown from its initial full-time faculty of 16 and a total student
enrollment of 200 to a full-time faculty of 1400 and a total medical
student enrollment of over 880. |
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History
of AOA
When William Webster Root and five other medical
students at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago organized
Alpha Omega Alpha in 1902, "excellence" was hardly the
word that would describe American medical education.
Indeed, the founder viewed the society as a protest against "a
condition which associated the name medical student with rowdyism,
boorishness, immorality, and low educational ideals."
Of the approximately 25,000 medical students in
the United States at the turn of the century, no more than 15 percent
were college graduates. The only requirement in most schools was
a high school diploma or its equivalent; the latter often meaning
the ability to pay the fee. The schools themselves-there were about
150-were by and large of dubious quality. In his landmark study
of medical education in the United States and Canada, published
in 1910, Abraham Flexner found so-called medical schools located
in storefronts, tenements, and warehouses, their laboratory equipment
consisting of a couple of microscopes, some moldy slides, and a
lonely skeleton. With a few exceptions, notably the Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine, founded in 1893, the medical school curriculum
consisted of a series of lectures, sometimes supplemented by demonstrations
at the bedside or in the laboratory, if such existed.
These, then, were the circumstances under which
Root and his fellow medical students met to form a society that
would foster honesty and formulate higher ideals of scholastic achievement.
Chartered in 1903 by the state of Illinois, Alpha Omega Alpha's
growth has paralleled the development of American medical education.
Within a decade after the society was founded, chapters were established
at seventeen medical schools. At present there are 124 active chapters
in the United States and Canada.
Today, when students and established physicians
alike reject easy platitudes, the tenets of the society are more
relevant than ever. As framed by Root, they are a modern interpretation
of the Hippocratic oath:
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"It
is the duty of members to foster the scientific and philosophical
features of the medical profession, to look beyond self to
the welfare of the profession and of the public, to cultivate
social mindedness, as well as individualistic attitude toward
responsibilities, to show respect for colleagues, especially
for elders and teachers, to foster research and in all ways
to ennoble the profession of medicine and advance it in public
opinion. It is equally a duty to avoid that which is unworthy,
including the commercial spirit and all practices injurious
to the welfare of patients, the public, or the profession."
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(Taken
from http://www.alphaomegaalpha.org/AOAmain/History.htm)
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History
of the Texas Gamma AOA Chapter at UTSW
Although the charter of the Texas Gamma Chapter
of AOA was presented to UT Southwestern Medical School in 1950,
the actual history of the school's honorary scholastic society
starts some twenty years prior to that. Harry M. Spence, MD, former
Chair of Urology at UT Southwestern and AOA member himself, addressed
the UTSW AOA chapter at its 1988 annual banquet, giving an account
of this history entitled "Recollections of the Early Days
of Medical Honor Societies at Baylor Medical College and Southwestern
Medical School." On this occasion, he presented a collection
of induction banquet programs and memorabilia to the UTSW AOA
chapter. Below are his words, which were later published in the
April 1993 issue of the Dallas Medical Journal:
"In 1902, at the College of Medicine
of the University of Illinois, Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) the organization
destined to become the national medical honor fraternity, was
born. Shortly thereafter, a chapter was formed at Harvard Medical
School. I was initiated into that organization in 1929. Then,
as now, election of the best and the brightest was based primarily
on scholarship. In 1936, upon joining the clinical faculty at
the Baylor Medical College then located in Dallas, I learned that
Baylor had no AOA chapter, although a local honorary scholastic
medical fraternity had been established in 1929, with Cecil O.
Patterson and Edwin L. Rippy, then both junior students, the leaders
of the venture.
Dr. Patterson later gave me the following background
of the society which preceded our current AOA chapter on the Dallas
medical scene:
In the late 1920s, unaware of the existence
of the AOA national organization, the nine top-ranking members
of the class approached George T. Caldwell, MD, professor of pathology,
with the idea of establishing a society of medical undergraduates
chosen for scholastic achievement. The students were surprised
to learn from Caldwell, an alumnus of the AOA chapter at the University
of Chicago, that such an organization, national in scope, already
existed. Nevertheless, Patterson and the group of nine decided
to form a local scholastic honor medical society to be called
Alpha Pi Alpha (APA), with Professor Caldwell as the faculty sponsor,
a position he occupied for many years. The intention of the charter
members was to petition the national AOA to absorb them after
a brief interval. Yet, 20 years were to elapse before the dream
of the founders materialized, with the presentation of a charter
of the Texas Gamma Chapter of AOA to the Southwestern Medical
School of the University of Texas in 1950.
Problems encountered in the interval included
an unfavorable early review for AOA acceptance by a representative
of the Rockefeller Foundation, who found that even the existence
of Baylor Medical College was in doubt, as it was supported largely
by tuition fees from students. Next came the move of Baylor to
Houston in 1943, the creation de novo of the free-standing Southwestern
College of Medicine, and its eventual incorporation into the University
of Texas system in 1949.
That APA survived this turmoil attests to the
virtue of recognizing high scholarship and to the quality of its
members, undergraduate and alumni alike. Indeed, AOA alumni from
other schools were always considered de facto members of APA as
they entered the Dallas medical milieu.
Among those who served as faculty sponsors,
I held the post for several years in the late 1940s. I look back
with more than a modicum of pride upon the accomplishments of
those times. For example, the full-time concept in clinical sciences
was flowering with Tinsley Harrison, Carl Moyer, Arthur Grollman,
and others of comparable stature at hand. I initiated informal
evening meetings between such individuals and student members
of APA, where any subject might be discussed. These early "rap
sessions" produced both knowledge and wholesome camaraderie.
An APA lectureship open to all physicians was established. Alfred
Blalock, Michael DeBakey, and others of similar caliber were speakers.
I had a hand in seeing that the annual banquet honoring initiates,
while retaining its dignity, became less stodgy than the former
black-tie, sans-alcohol affairs.
Although APA had functioned well, by 1949, the
growth of Southwestern Medical School in prestige and stature
evidenced that the time was ripe for the local society to be supplanted
by an AOA chapter.
The long-awaited installation banquet was held
November 10, 1950. At this gala occasion, Theophilus S. Painter,
chancellor of the University of Texas, presided. W.L. Bierring,
national president of AOA, conferred the charter; and Carl Moyer,
dean of Southwestern, accepted it. Dean Emeritus William Lee Hart
responded on behalf of the medical school. Edward H. Cary, leader
in all things medical in Dallas and president of the Southwestern
Foundation, responded on its behalf. Chauncey D. Leake, from the
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, gave a scholarly
and stirring address.
The AOA chapter at Southwestern was then accomplished
in fact. Its subsequent history is known to many. It was my privilege
to preside at the 1959 annual banquet. Although records - particularly
of the earlier meetings - are sparse, an assortment of programs,
often autographed, from the banquets honoring the initiates may
help to identify the individuals involved. They have been presented
to the UT Southwestern chapter of AOA for its archives."
Spence,
HM. Recollections of the Early Days of Medical Honor Societies
at Baylor Medical College and Southwestern Medical School. Dallas
Medical Journal. 1993; 79(4):173.
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