University of Texas Medical Branch celebrates 135 years

GALVESTON

The University of Texas Medical Branch, which celebrated its 135th anniversary Monday, has kept alive a tradition of cutting-edge research and collaboration that students and staff say drew them in and kept generations connected to the island.

Medical staff, alumni and students said a culture of mentorship, camaraderie and service has followed them from the classroom into their careers. For some, that environment also brought them back as faculty.

Bobby Bobby, a third-year medical student, described a personal and accessible institution whose culture could be summed up in three pillars.

“There’s this relentless pursuit of excellence, whether that’s through research or innovation, to make sure that we’re doing the absolute best we can,” Bobby said.

“The second is unapologetically and wholeheartedly serving those around us whether it’s our students, our staff, our community. Third, and above all, you never lose sight or focus of the patient, the human in front of us.”

TRAGEDY INTO TRIUMPH

Dr. Courtney Townsend Jr. first came to the medical branch as a medical student in 1965 and graduated in 1969 before completing his surgical residency there in 1974.

After surgical oncology training at the University of California, Los Angeles and two years in the Navy, he was recruited back to Galveston as a faculty member in 1978.

Townsend said the medical branch’s history is defined by its ability to turn adversity into growth.

After the Great Storm of 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, the university reopened and rebuilt, upgrading its facilities and equipment within the year, Townsend said. By 1915, the state had commissioned the medical branch to build Texas’ first children’s hospital.

The 1947 Texas City explosion, the worst industrial disaster in U.S. history, helped spur the development of the medical branch’s burn services and research. That work eventually led to the Blocker Burn Unit and the Shriners Hospitals for Children, now known as Shriners Children’s Texas.

“There have been two great tragedies that the institution has been involved in, and from that both have resulted in triumph,” Townsend said.

ADAPTING TO CRISIS

Dr. Shawn Pua Eiko Nishi, a professor and chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, came to the medical branch in 2001 after graduating from Coe College in Iowa, drawn by Texas’ affordable medical schools and the chance to return closer to her parents in Midland-Odessa.

She felt the medical branch’s sense of community as soon as she stepped on campus, she said.

“There’s something that you can’t quite grasp if you don’t actually come and visit,” Nishi said. “There’s just something different about being in a professional learning environment where the energy was just that much more exciting.”

Nishi and her classmates were in gross anatomy when they learned about the Sept. 11 attacks in which hijackers crashed four commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Large televisions mounted on the walls of the medical branch showed the events unfolding as students stopped to try to understand what was happening.

The experience became an early lesson in adapting to crisis, Nishi said.

“You need to be aware, you need to adapt, and then you need to buckle down and do the things that are in front of you to help the people around you,” she said.

“WE’RE NOT MOVING”

Dr. Amber High, now a faculty member and clinician with 10 years of experience at the medical branch, was on campus as a nurse-anesthesia student just before Hurricane Ike struck in 2008.

Storm surge flooded more than 1 million square feet of campus space, causing more than $1 billion in damage.

High was the last student from UT Houston to complete a nurse-anesthesia clinical rotation at the medical branch before the storm ended outside student rotations, she said.

The storm forced the campus to close for four months, while officials in Austin considered whether the medical branch should remain on the island.

Dr. Ben Raimer, who later became university president, state Rep. Craig Eiland and the Sealy & Smith Foundation were among those who fought to keep the medical branch in Galveston.

“They convinced the governor, and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to say that ‘we’re not going anywhere,’” Townsend said. “The University of Texas stops for no storm, and we certainly weren’t going to be moving.”

ANOTHER TEST

Sheba Ann Luke, chair of the Graduate Department in the medical branch’s School of Nursing, first came to the university as a graduate nursing student in 2010. She earned a master’s degree in nursing in 2012 and her Doctor of Nursing Practice in 2015 before joining the faculty, where she has remained ever since.

Luke remembers how the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 changed nearly every part of graduate nursing education.

“All of our graduate nursing students are registered nurses, most with full lives outside school,” Luke said. “They were seeing the pandemic day to day at the bedside and coming home to their families, yet they still pushed through and stayed in the program.

“We saw attrition, but the ones that pushed through, those students came out stronger.”

GETTING AHEAD OF THE EIGHT-BALL

Bobby first came to the medical branch in 2014, shortly after graduating high school, working as a unit secretary answering patient call lights. He later attended the nursing school, graduated in 2017 and worked as an ICU nurse for about six years before returning in 2024 as a medical student.

That same mindset is evident in how the medical branch is approaching artificial intelligence, research and education, Bobby said.

While AI has raised questions about its role in academics and healthcare, the medical branch is trying to move quickly while making sure the technology is used responsibly, Bobby said.

“What I’ve experienced, and my peers would probably agree with me, is that we tend to get ahead of the eight ball,” Bobby said. “AI is a tool, like a hammer. A hammer could build a tree house, or it could tear it down.”

Having experienced the institution as an employee, nurse and now student, Bobby has watched the medical branch grow while maintaining the culture that first drew him in.

“I think it’s one of those things where we carry that spirit of trying to be the first and kind of move that frontier forward, but also paying respects to where we came from,” Bobby said.