University of Texas Medical Branch - History

History

The location of the Medical Department of the University of Texas was decided between Galveston and Houston in a popular vote in 1881, but its opening was delayed due to the construction of the main university campus in Austin, Texas. The need for medical training in Texas was great: in 1891, 80% of doctors in the state had under a year of formal training in medicine, and so the "Texas Medical College" was formed in Galveston with the idea that it would become the medical department once state funding began.

The original building, now called Old Red, was begun on 1890 under the supervision of the Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton. Clayton toured several medical colleges in the North and East before drawing up his plans for the building. The medical school campus also included the John Sealy Hospital, which provided charity care for any who claimed Galveston residence.

Upon opening, the Red Building had been starkly underfurnished, a problem which was not fully remedied until after the Hurricane of 1900, when the state rallied around the ravaged city. Dr. Thompson, professor of surgery, said that "the regents were so generous in repairing the damage to the building and restoring the equipment, that we were actually in better shape at the end of the year 1901 than we had been before." In addition, the damage to the roof of Old Red allowed for the addition of sky lights, which had always been wanted for the dissection room.

In 1915 the medical branch built the first hospital dedicated to children in Texas. By 1924 UTMB had established the first department of pediatrics in the state of Texas — which was also one of the first departments of pediatrics in the United States.

From its modest beginnings in the 1890s as the first state medical school in Texas, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has developed into a large, sophisticated health science complex with numerous schools and institutes, including: a Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Health Professions, Institute for Human Infections and Immunity, Institute for the Medical Humanities, an affiliated Shriners Burns Hospital, the Sealy Center for Molecular Medicine, the Sealy Center for Structural Biology, the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Center for Addiction Research, the Educational Cancer Center, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women’s Health, the Institute for Translational Sciences, the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL), the Sealy Center for Cancer Cell Biology, the Sealy Center for Environmental Health and Medicine, the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Tropical Diseases, the Stark Diabetes Center, the Center for Biomedical Engineering, the Center for Environmental Toxicology, the Sealy Center on Aging, the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development. UTMB operates an extensive clinical care enterprise with a wide variety of specialty programs.

UTMB’s annual budget of approximately $1.4 billion includes grants, awards, and contracts from federal and private sources totaling more than $150 million, in addition to institutional allocations for research.

In 1996, UTMB purchased the adjacent 128 year old St. Mary's Hospital, the first catholic hospital in Texas. The building was converted into the Rebecca Sealy Psychiatric Hospital.

UTMB became a member of the Houston-based Texas Medical Center in 2010. Wollam, Allison.

Dr. Danny O. Jacobs, a former Department Chair at Duke University, has been named executive vice president, provost and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch, effective Oct. 1 2012].