Dr. Brigham Willis, the dean of the UT Tyler School of Medicine, explains the mission of the institution, which is geared toward addressing health disparities and fortifying health care access in East Texas. He details the strategic process behind selecting students with deep ties to the region and unique activities planned to foster a strong bond between them, the school and the community.
Willis also provides an update on the construction of the medical school facility and explains how UT Tyler is harnessing modern solutions like rural broadband and telehealth to enhance care in rural areas. Hear about the school’s unique approach to practical experience, in which students earn EMT certification during their first month.
Finally, Willis expresses his heartfelt gratitude to the people of East Texas for their unwavering support of medical education here in East Texas.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. It’s a time-honored rite of passage. Tomorrow, the 40 members of the UT Tyler Medical School Class of 2027 will receive their white doctor’s coats with their names embroidered on them. The founding dean of the UT (Tyler) Medical School, Dr. Brigham Willis, is our guest today. Welcome.
Dr. Brigham Willis: Thank you for having me, Mike. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Mike Landess: Good to have you here again. Now, you have been looking forward to this last week in June for quite some time. Class number one started at the beginning of this last week.
Dr. Brigham Willis: It did. I’m incredibly excited. It’s the culmination of so many months of preparation by our entire team, and having the students on campus finally, after putting everything together: the facilities, all the different programs, the curriculum, is just the tangible culmination of something the whole community has been trying to build for years. So, it’s really exciting.
Mike Landess: You have posted on social media–not you, specifically–but it’s been posted on social media–all of the incredible events that you’ve put together this week for these young people coming in to be a part of our community and a part of the school for the next four years. Tell us about them.
Dr. Brigham Willis: Absolutely. We want to have a really great experience for the students to really get engaged with the school, the community, the curriculum and their fellow classmates. And so, a variety of activities, from games and competitions to–yesterday we were out in the community, and we had the students, as one of their first activities, do a full half-day participating in community service with local service organizations. So, that’s one of the things that we are messaging and doing from day one is having the students fully embedded in the community. They have service hours that they do every single year. And so, and that’s the number one pillar of our medical school is community. So community, education, clinical care and research, but community is really what we’re driving. So they really engage with that, and it’s just been a really fun week. They’re all excited to be here, incredible people who were selected.
Mike Landess: The backstory on community is the fact that you want to keep these young people here.
Dr. Brigham Willis: That’s exactly right. So our entire admissions philosophy was geared on selecting people with really deep ties to East Texas, because we want people who are committed to their region and the community. That’s the whole reason the school is there is to solve health disparities and health access issues in the region. So we want people who really love East Texas and want to be here. And to do that, we want them to continue to engage with the community and feel passionate about that.
Mike Landess: UT Tyler President, Dr. Kirk Calhoun, said that he was told by a number of people when he first came up with all of this and started moving this forward that, “You’re not going to find the people that you need here in East Texas.” And he said, “Well, we had a big surprise for them.” Fill us in on that.
Dr. Brigham Willis: That’s exactly right. I had the same feedback from a lot of people: “How are you going to find enough qualified people?” I mean the number of applications we’ve gotten and the number of incredibly qualified people from East Texas–it’s been amazing. It’s also difficult because we had 4,000 applications. We can only select 40. It’s inspiring to me the number of people who want to come and help the region. But yeah, it’s been incredible. They’re amazingly academically gifted, they’re empathic, humanistic people who are committed to the community and making a difference, and so we’re really lucky to have an amazing group.
Mike Landess: I think Dr. Calhoun said all but about six were directly from East Texas, and the six were from the Dallas area.
Dr. Brigham Willis: Yeah, and not only that, but even the ones who weren’t directly from East Texas had connections to East Texas, familial or work. There was something that made us really, really believe that they were in, really engaged with our region.
Mike Landess: Now, if they look at their new medical school, they’ll drive down the street, and they’ll see a big red patch of dirt, because that’s all it is right now. How long before the medical school actually starts getting a foundation and walls going up and that sort of thing?
Dr. Brigham Willis: Yeah, it’s really exciting. So we do have an amazing facility right now. We built it on the UT Health Science Center on the north campus. It’s an absolutely amazing building with classrooms and simulation center, clinical skills, so they get a good experience from day one. But the new building, which is what you’re talking about is on Beckham, right by the hospital, and it’s ahead of schedule. Actually, the first foundation and beams are actually going to go up in a few weeks. So it looks like it’s happening and should be done by sometime fall-ish ’25.
Mike Landess: What’s been the biggest challenge for you so far in your role as the founding dean of the school?
Dr. Brigham Willis: I think the biggest challenge–there have been so many successes and the excitement is the most exciting is — amazing is the feeling of the team and just everyone trying to do something that’s really inspiring. I guess the biggest challenge is, like any startup, starting from a baseline, where you have to build everything. Every day, there’s challenges, logistical challenges, trying to get things done. We also built this school, even though it’s been an idea for many years, this is the shortest timeline for a school, from approval to actually starting the first class that I’ve ever been a part of. And so, the rush of getting the entire team on board, recruiting, getting everything established, getting everything built in a very short time period was what we struggled with. We had an amazing team, and we got it done.
Mike Landess: We’ve talked about rural health for some time now, and getting a rural broadband as a part of being able to get the health care to them through high technology. Is that something that the school will embrace as well? Will you be a part of developing that for these young people?
Dr. Brigham Willis: Yes, absolutely. So, a big focus of our entire curriculum is rural health and how to improve rural health access. Actually, after just a few months, they begin their rural health rotations. And so we’re going to have them out in the rural communities learning how to provide that access. Telehealth is a big part of their curriculum. Health systems science — how do you set up systems of care, so that you can care for rural populations. All that’s integrated into the curriculum from a very early point. And then beyond that, when they graduate, we’re setting up the residency programs in the communities throughout East Texas. So we’re not just having the programs in Tyler, we have rural psychiatry programs, rural family medicine. They’ll actually be based at the hospitals within the smaller towns, so that they actually get that experience of living and serving the community.
Mike Landess: Dr. Calhoun–the very first time that we interviewed and talked about the whole work toward building the medical school–he said, “You know, one of the things I’m going to make sure that these young people do is, I’m going to make them ride on the ambulance. I’m going to make them go out with the ambulance, work with the paramedics and get out there and get to meet the people, get to see what it’s like on the ground.” And I thought, “Wow, what a great idea.” Is there going to be a program like that? Or was that just a great idea that may or may not happen?
Dr. Brigham Willis: No, it’s happening. They’re about to start that next Monday. So, every single student, their first four weeks, actually goes through an intense, complete EMT certification. So they’re all going to become certified EMTs in their first month. So they’ll be out on the ambulances learning how to save lives from day one. So, they learn the context of the community, they learn the context of why what they’re learning in a classroom actually matters. And, they’re going to have the skills to save someone’s life in their first month, which is totally different than when I went to med school. I was useless until like almost the end of medical school. They’re going to have tangible skills, and like Dr. Calhoun said, be out in the community very early.
Mike Landess: Any thoughts you’d like to leave us with before we wrap up today?
Dr. Brigham Willis: No, I just want to, to anyone who’s listening, the whole community, just thank the whole East Texas region for supporting us. It’s been incredible from philanthropy to volunteer work to just the excitement, and it’s really made an incredible environment. It’s the most inspiring thing I’ve ever been a part of in terms of my career in medical education. And I hope everyone gets to meet our amazing class of 40 incredible individuals.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been the founding dean of the UT Tyler Medical School, Dr. Brigham Willis. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to KVUT.org. I’m Mike Landess with UT Tyler Radio.
Jeff Johnson: Thank you for listening to the UT Tyler Radio Podcast on 99.7 KVUT. If you’d like to hear this episode again, or if you missed a previous episode, find the UT Tyler Radio Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or click “podcasts” on our website, KVUT.org.
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