Rounds

The First TTUHSC

Nurse's Cap

Ruan Reast, FNP, MSN, (Nursing '93, '84) holds her original nurse's cap as a member of the School of Nursing's first Traditional BSN class. Teddy Langford Jones, PhD, FNP, dean and Patricia Yoder-Wise, EdD, RN, associate dean, designed the caps to form a double T and had them made from West Texas cotton. "You don't create a culture without the trappings of culture," quipped Jones. "I believe they call it 'branding' now." The caps, which were fastened by multiple bobby pins, were only worn for one hour before falling off and given an early retirement. "I'm still honored to have been given one," Reast said.

Reast Demonstrates Nursing Cap

Alumni and Students

Share Special Bond

Roughly 100 people sat in Room 100 of the Academic Classroom Building on Friday, June 8, 2019, as eight students on stage introduced themselves. One student, Sara Dogom, summed up what everyone in the room was feeling:

View the SOM Renunion photo gallery.

“I wanted to be a physician and just didn’t know which medical school would be the best fit. I needed to be somewhere I could express all this fiery passion I had in me to be with patients. Texas Tech’s School of Medicine was my last interview, and after many interviews not satisfying the need in my heart, I was ecstatic when I realized that TTUHSC filled the void. This was where I was meant to be. It’s about the patient here. It’s about the student here. The passion and genuine concern that faculty have for medical students and patients has made this an incredible experience for me.”

Her testimony, along with that of the other medical students, opened the nostalgia floodgates for those in the audience – School of Medicine alumni. They had gathered for a school reunion in celebration of the university’s 50th anniversary.

One after another shared their memories, often with much emotion.

Paul Nolan, MD, (Medicine ’86) shared his struggle with biochemistry. “If you didn’t pass, you wouldn’t get the ‘MD’ next to your name. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I was outright flunking biochemistry. Dr. Dalley (Bernall Dalley, associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy) set me up with a student mentor and that got me through. Hearing these current students’ stories today makes me so glad to see that same family spirit continuing on. I’m just so proud of this school.”

Stephen Walling, MD, (Medicine ’76): “I’m a member of the class of 1976, and I think it’s hard for students to imagine what things were like in those very early days. The first years of our medical school we didn’t have a developed faculty infrastructure at that time. We didn’t have graduate medical programs or residents anywhere. And if it hadn’t been for the community physicians of Lubbock, Texas, this school would never have gotten off the ground. And the doctors that gave their time, their energy and made patients available to us were the real basis on which this school was founded. We owe them tremendous gratitude for the wonderful medical school we have here now.”

The past. The future. One community of people with a huge love for TTUHSC.