FOR RELEASE: Sept. 11, 2006

GALVESTON, Texas ? The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston School of Medicine is one of the nation’s leading medical schools for Hispanics, according to Hispanic Business magazine’s September issue. UTMB was ranked third on the list, behind Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Medical School. Other Texas medical schools listed were the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Texas A&M University System Health Science Center in College Station.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 35.3 million of the nation’s population is Hispanic and about 6.7 million live in Texas. Hispanic Business magazine reported that out of the 826 medical students at the UTMB School of Medicine, 117 are Hispanic, and of the 203 medical degrees awarded in 2005, 23 went to Hispanic students.

“One of our core values at UTMB is to employ and educate a health care work force whose diversity mirrors the population they serve,” said Dr. Lauree Thomas, associate dean of student affairs. “We are wholeheartedly committed to focusing on ways to continue to support and increase the number of minority students, faculty and administrators at this academic health center. UTMB is a student-oriented institution and we take great pride providing all the necessary resources to ensure that its students’ medical education and experiences will be excellent ones.”

Some of those resources include programs offered to students even before they get to medical school including the Early Medical School Acceptance Program, which provides a rigorous undergraduate educational experience to assure that students receive the academic preparation required to pursue a medical education, and the Prematriculation Reinforcement Enrichment Program which provides a smooth transition from the undergraduate curriculum to the rigorous and demanding expectations of the medical school curriculum.

Established in 1891, UTMB is the oldest academic health sciences center in Texas. In addition to the School of Medicine, it includes the School of Nursing, School of Allied Health Sciences, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Institute for the Medical Humanities and the Marine Biomedical Institute. The UTMB School of Medicine is the oldest medical school in the state and among the largest nationally in enrollment. It functioned as the state’s only medical school until 1949.
The University of Texas Medical Branch
Public Affairs Office
301 University Boulevard, Suite 3.102
Galveston, Texas 77555-0144
www.utmb.edu