About the GSBS

Island Living

In 1920 a professor of biological chemistry at the University of Texas Medical Branch asked the President of the University of Texas at Austin to form a committee to develop graduate courses at UTMB for a Master's degree program.

The UTMB Dean supported this proposal because he believed that graduate students could serve as research and teaching assistants to the faculty, thereby easing the teaching burden and increasing research productivity. In the spring of 1921, the Regents authorized the departments of Biochemistry, Bacteriology and Preventive Medicine, and Physiology to supervise the work of students who could earn master's degrees awarded by the University of Texas at Austin; and graduate education at UTMB began.

The first graduate degree based on work done at the Galveston campus was awarded in 1922. This was an important step in institutionalizing research degree programs at UTMB, although only 10 more students earned master's degrees between 1922 and 1941. Throughout the 1920's and 1930's, UTMB made steady increases in the number of pre-clinical faculty with PhD degrees, and in the provision of laboratory facilities and equipment for the conduct of experimental studies. This period of steady growth in research at UTMB was followed by the appointment in 1942 of Dr. Chauncey Leake, an internationally known pharmacologist and philosopher as Executive Vice President of UTMB.

Dr. Leake was a strong supporter of research and spurred the expansion of academic programs on the campus. Attracting new basic science and clinical faculty who needed laboratory space, Dr. Leake was able to persuade the Regents to build a building specifically for research. He encouraged faculty to apply for federal and private funds to support research (which was quite successful). He was also strongly supportive of the development of graduate programs in the basic sciences.

From 1942, the time at which Dr. Chauncey Leake became UTMB Executive Vice President, until 1969, long after Dr. Leake's retirement, the basic science departments at UTMB produced 124 Master's degrees and 77 PhD degrees, all awarded by the Austin institution. In 1969 the University of Texas Board of Regents adopted amendments to their Rules and Regulations that permitted the establishment of a degree-granting Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) on the UTMB campus.

Since its establishment, the GSBS has had six Deans, Dr. Edward J. Brandt, Jr., Dr. J. Palmer Saunders, Dr. K. Lemone Yielding, Dr. Cary W. Cooper, Dr. David Niesel and the current Dean Dr. Melinda Sheffield-Moore. From its humble beginnings, the GSBS at UTMB has become one of the leading institutions of higher education in the biomedical sciences community in the country.

Historical information drawn from " A Brief History of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston", written by Chester R. Burns, MD, PhD, James Wade Rockwell Professor of Medical History, Institute for the Medical Humanities. This document was produced as a part of the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the GSBS (1994-95).