Baylor College of Medicine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
Baylor College of Medicine |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Established | 1900 |
| Type | Private University |
| Endowment | US $1.08 billion |
| President | Peter G. Traber |
| Faculty | 3,378 (1,755 full-time, 327 part-time, 1,237 voluntary, and 59 emeritus) |
| Postgraduates | 1,211 (678 in medical school, 533 in graduate school, and 130 in allied health) |
| Location | Houston, TX,, USA |
| Campus | Urban, Texas Medical Center |
| Website | www.bcm.edu |
Baylor College of Medicine is a private medical school located in Houston, Texas, USA. It has been consistently rated the top medical school in the State of Texas and among the best in the United States.[1] Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences is also highly rated. Despite not being connected to a university, Baylor has become one of a relatively small number of American colleges with an endowment greater than $1 billion[2].
Contents |
[edit] History
The school was formed in 1900 in Dallas, Texas as University of Dallas Medical Department. It allied with Baylor University in Waco, Texas in 1903 and moved to the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas in 1943.
In 1969, Baylor College of Medicine separated from Baylor University under the direction of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Currently, it is led by Dr. Peter G. Traber, formerly of GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
[edit] Programs
[edit] Medical school
Baylor College of Medicine ranked 10th overall in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report top medical schools for research and 11th for top primary care.[3] Currently, 168 medical students join the medical school each year, 75% of whom are from Texas. For entering medical students, the average undergraduate GPA is 3.80 and average MCAT section is above 11.3. Baylor College of Medicine is the only private medical school in the southwest region of the United States, and has the lowest tuition of all private medical schools in the United States. Baylor is one of the few medical schools in the United States that is structured with 1.5 years of preclinical coursework followed by 2.5 years of clinical rotations. Most other U.S. medical schools have 2 years of preclinical courses followed by 2 years of clinical rotations.
[edit] Graduate school
In 2005 BCM ranked 13th in terms of research funding from the National Institutes of Health[4], and its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences ranked 22nd for best Ph.D. program in the biological sciences (2007). Additionally, several individual departments earn particularly heavy NIH funding, receiving several "Top Ten" rankings by the NIH in 2005[5]:
- No. 1: Molecular & Cellular Biology; Molecular Genetics; and Pediatrics
- No. 2: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- No. 8: Neurosciences
100 students join the graduate program each year, of which one-half were women and one-third were graduates from foreign schools. The average graduate student GPA for is 3.5 and the average GRE score is above the 70th percentile.
Many departments of the graduate school collaborate with Rice University and other institutions within the Texas Medical Center. Currently, 489 graduate students are enrolled in one of the fourteen different PhD programs. These programs are:
- Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
- Immunology
- Molecular and Cellular Biology
- Molecular and Human Genetics
- Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
- Molecular Virology & Microbiology
- Neuroscience
- Pharmacology (no longer accepting students)
- Cardiovascular Sciences
- Cell and Molecular Biology
- Developmental Biology
- Structural and Computational Biology & Molecular Biophysics
- Translational Biology & Molecular Medicine
- Clinical Scientist Training Program
[edit] Biomedical research
Baylor College of Medicine has dedicated more than 800,000 square feet of its space for laboratory research, and is adding another 322,000 in the next few years. According to the National Science Foundation 2004, BCM ranks sixth in R&D spending in the life sciences, behind UCSF, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, UW at Seattle, and UPenn.[citation needed] Housed within this research space are exceptional centers and facilities, such as:
- BCM's Human Genome Sequencing Center
- The Cancer Center
- The Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
- The Huffington Center on Aging
- The National Center for Macromolecular Imaging
- The W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology
- State-of-the-art core facilities, including microscopy, DNA sequencing, microarray, and protein sequencing
- One of the largest transgenic mouse facilities in the country
[edit] Physician assistant program
Baylor College of Medicine is also home to a Physician Assistant (PA) program. Thirty PA students are accepted each year. For PA students entering in 2004, the average GPA was 3.70 and the average GRE score was 1169 verbal/quantitative and 4.9 analytical. Baylor College of Medicine ranked 7th in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report rankings for Physician Assistant schools. The overall passing rate for all graduates of the PA Program on the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination is 97 percent with a 100 percent pass rate for the past eight years.
Baylor College of Medicine is also home to a nurse anesthetist (NA) program.
[edit] Hospital affiliation
BCM is affiliated with many of the hospitals that make the Texas Medical Center the largest medical center in the world. These include the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston, Texas Children's Hospital, Ben Taub General Hospital, Quentin Mease Community Hospital, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research and the Menninger Clinic, which moved from Kansas in 2002. While MD Anderson is affiliated with the University of Texas, its faculty and trainees may be affiliated with either Baylor or the University of Texas medical school in Houston, which is located across the street from Baylor. Methodist Hospital had been Baylor's primary private teaching hospital for many decades. Baylor and Methodist terminated many of their connections in 2004 for reasons that seem to revolve around a planned ambulatory care center and ownership of the physicians' private practices. Baylor's primary private affiliate then became St. Luke's, while Methodist has affiliated with the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, which is located in New York City. Methodist and Baylor retain some affiliation, but there remains significant rancor between the two administrations and a significant lack of clarity in regard to the future of the many physicians and programs that had been shared by the two institutions. In the wake of the Methodist problems, Baylor has strengthened its ties to MD Anderson, leading, for example, to the recent decision for Baylor's chairman of neurosurgery to also be chair at MD Anderson.
The plan for St. Luke's to be Baylor's primary private teaching hospital dissolved, and Baylor now plans to build its own 250 bed hospital within the Texas Medical Center3 Such a hospital would give Baylor more control over its clinical mission and streamline the clinical use of research advances. It will also cost upwards of $1 billion and prolong the current administrative uncertainty.
[edit] University affiliation
Baylor is also affiliated with DeBakey High School for Health Professions, the only exemplary high school in Houston Independent School District. The high school is part of a premed program with Baylor and the University of Houston where the top students in the senior class apply to receive conditional acceptance to BCM after completing college at the University of Houston. Tuition for both schools is fully paid.
Baylor has combined Bacc/M.D. programs with three other universities besides the University of Houston. They have a long-standing combined program with Rice University in Houston, with the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas and with Baylor University in Waco. For all these programs, entering college freshmen who are accepted into the program receive conditional acceptance to Baylor College of Medicine. This means, that if certain GPA and MCAT requirements are met, acceptance to BCM is automatic. The Rice/BCM program, however, does not require an MCAT. The UTPA/BCM program pays tuition at both institutions.
[edit] Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative
The Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative[6] at Baylor College of Medicine is one of 23 centers nationally funded by the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health as an AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP). Partner countries include Romania, Mexico, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland.
The AITRP supports long-term (2-3 years) postdoctoral training in HIV/AIDS research at Baylor College of Medicine for health-professionals from partner countries. Short-term U.S. training of Romanian, Mexican, and southern African health professionals also is conducted. This part of the program supports professionals who might benefit from focused training, usually in pediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment or clinical research. The AITRP also supports clinical elective opportunities in Romania and Botswana for talented U.S. pediatric residents and postdoctoral fellows interested in international HIV/AIDS care and research. Exceptional applicants from any U.S. institution are considered.
For long-term training, each Romanian, Mexican, or southern African postdoctoral trainee is asked to declare a principal interest in one of two training tracks: (1) clinical research or (2) laboratory-based research. Dr. Kline, the Program Director, and program faculty assist each trainee in selecting an area of training and research appropriate to his or her interests and qualifications. In addition to declaring a principal training track, trainees have an opportunity to pursue a graduate degree in public health (M.P.H.) in the Texas Medical Center at the University of Texas School of Public Health.
[edit] Notable people
- John Barnhill — Chief of the Consultation-Liaison Service at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
- C. Thomas Caskey — American internist and prominent medical geneticist and biomedical entrepreneur.
- Michael E. DeBakey — award-winning cardiovascular surgeon
- Gregory Duncan — Professor and world-renowned professional curler.[7]
- H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. — American philosopher
- Roger Guillemin — Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine (1977)[8]
- Tanvir Hussain — Editor-in-Chief, American Medical Students Association's International Health Journal Global Pulse [9]
- Andrew W. Schally — Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine (1977)[10]
[edit] References
- ^ America's Best Graduate Schools 2007 US News and World Report. Accessed January 3, 2007.
- ^ College and University Endowments, 2005 Accessed January 3, 2007.
- ^ About Us: Baylor College of Medicine Accessed March 16, 2007
- ^ NIH Awards to Medical Schools Accessed January 3, 2007
- ^ NIH Awards to Medical School Departments Accessed January 3, 2007
- ^ Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative bayloraids.org. Accessed March 14, 2007.
- ^ Gregory Duncan Bio. USA Curling. Retrieved on 2007-03-31.
- ^ Roger Guillemin - Autobiography. The Nobel Foundation (1977). Retrieved on 2007-03-31.
- ^ Editors of Global Pulse. AMSA. Retrieved on 2007-03-31.
- ^ Andrew V. Schally - Autobiography. The Nobel Foundation (1977). Retrieved on 2007-03-31.
