FORT WORTH, Texas (May 22, 2023) – The summer 2023 issue of TCU Magazine is available and has four stories about the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University and how its medical students are making an impact in Fort Worth.
The magazine’s cover story, ‘Groundbreaking Graduates’ is the final installment of the four-part series that has followed six students from the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU’s first class of medical students that started medical school in July 2019. The story takes a look at Burnett School of Medicine alumni Quinn Losefsky, M.D., Ivette Avila, M.D., Edmundo Esparza, M.D., Jonas Kruse, M.D., Dilan Shah, M.D. and Charna Kinard, M.D., as they completed their medical school journey.
Burnett School of Medicine at TCU Founding Dean Stuart D. Flynn, M.D.; Mohanakrishnan Sathyamoorthy, M.D., Professor and Department Chair of Internal Medicine at the School of Medicine along with Sam Sayed, a third-year medical student at the School of Medicine, led the discussion on Tuesday, May 23.
Dean Flynn discussed the idea behind launching a course called, ‘Future Accelerators of Medicine and Beyond’ (FAB) for first-year students when they begin medical school. The students meet four weeks out of the year for intensive sessions that help aspiring doctors both predict advances in science and health care and discover how these advances will influence their careers and care for patients. That includes how technology can be used to improve health outcomes for patients.
“The main point of this is to make them comfortable with change and the change usually means significant advances in knowledge and technology,” Dean Flynn said.
Students also learn about biowearables, the life cycle of drug development, artificial intelligence and more. They also spend a week working in groups creating a test or product to advance screening for a disease of their choice. The students present their ideas on improving patient care to a panel of experts, similar to the hit NBC show Shark Tank.
FORT WORTH (May 13, 2023) – For some medical students in the inaugural class of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, the path to becoming a physician was clear. For others, their journeys were shaped along the way.
No matter which path they took, it led to a historic graduation at the Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena at TCU on May 13.
The commencement marked the end of an eight-year educational journey for Grace Newell, M.D., who received her Doctor of Medicine degree and undergraduate degree from TCU.
“I was so excited to celebrate with all my friends and classmates but it’s also bittersweet,” Newell said. “The last eight years at TCU has really set me up for success.”
The graduating class of medical students, also known as Dorman Scholars, capped off their time at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU with a celebratory commencement that featured fireworks at the end of the ceremony for TCU’s 150th year.
“This has been such a long journey through pre-med and now medical school,” Sameer Allahabadi, M.D., graduate of Burnett School of Medicine said. “This commencement was like our one last ride, and I was so happy to celebrate with my friends and my family.”
“Our students have become innovative leaders and are prepared for the challenges and opportunities ahead of them,” TCU President Daniel W. Pullin said. “TCU has given them the life skills, education and knowledge to continue to their next step and make a difference here in Texas and beyond, in the global community. We congratulate them all and look forward to celebrating commencement weekend.”
The Burnett School of Medicine opened in July 2019 with its inaugural class of medical students. The medical school’s unique curriculum with a focus on communication and the development of Empathetic Scholars® has uniquely positioned the school to radically transform medical education and improve healthcare for generations.
Shelby Wildish, M.D., who is a graduate of Burnett School of Medicine and received a bachelor’s degree at TCU, will be heading to Tufts Medical Center in Boston as a medical resident in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
“What TCU taught me was how to care,” Dr. Wildish said. “That’s what I’m going to bring with me to Tufts. That’s what I’m going to bring into my career and that’s how I’m going to practice going forward.”
Read more about some of the Class of 2023 graduates:
Shelby Wildish, M.D.
Hometown: Saint Andrews Parish (Kingston), Jamaica
Residency Program: Tufts Medical Center – Boston
Specialty: Obstetrics-Gynecology (OB-GYN)
Saint Andrews Parish in Jamaica, which is better known to most people in the world as Kingston, is a long way from Fort Worth, Texas. For Shelby Wildish, M.D., her hometown is where her dream of being a physician started.
“My mom has this picture that they framed when I was in kindergarten that asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and I drew a doctor and wrote, ‘This is me in the future,’” Wildish said.
Her path to pursue that dream was paved by her older brother. He attended TCU three years before she arrived on campus as a freshman for her undergraduate degree.
“Coming back to TCU was coming back to family,” Wildish said. “I fell in love with TCU and came back to the medical school and have another family now.”
“LIC is such a unique opportunity where we rotate through all of these different specialties and you can compare them in real time,” Wildish said.
It wasn’t until she met Beatrice Kutzler, M.D., assistant professor at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU and OB-GYN at Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center-Fort Worth, that the light bulb went off.
“I saw myself in her and I saw what I aspire to be in her, and she happened to be an OB-GYN,” Wildish said. “Then, I started diving deeper into OB-GYN and the diversity it allows and the practicality of the specialty for the future I want.”
The future Wildish has always wanted has been supported by many mentors along the way, her immediate family in Jamaica and her family at TCU. It takes a village to accomplish anything in life and medical school is no different, Wildish added.
“This is my second time graduating from TCU and walking across that stage in the basketball arena, but it is a completely different sensation this time around,” Wildish said. “When I walked across the stage this time, it felt like they were all walking across that stage with me.”
Grace Newell, M.D.
Hometown: Louisville, Colorado
Residency Program: UC Health – University of Colorado School of Medicine
Specialty: Child Neurology
Match Day is a special day for medical students across the United States as they all learn simultaneously what medical residency program, they will be part of as physicians.
But the week leading up to Match Day at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU was different, according to Grace Newell, M.D.
“What’s special about our school is that we support each other and we’re not competitive among each other by any means,” Newell said. “We’ve known each other from day one and it’s a small group of us and we’ve grown close. It was a lot of hard work that led us all to that point.”
She grew up in the small town of Louisville, Colorado, which sits in between Denver and Boulder. Newell left her hometown eight years ago to attend TCU for undergraduate studies, majoring in Neuroscience. She hoped that one day she would return to her home state.
During the pivotal away rotations, where medical students spend a predefined amount of time during their fourth year of medical school at other institutions auditioning for residency spots, Newell traveled to UC Health – University of Colorado School of Medicine, hoping to make a good impression.
“It was my top choice, and I kept the faith and kept in touch with that program,” Newell said.
Newell landed a spot in UC Health’s Child Neurology Residency Program in the Department of Pediatrics. She credited The Compassion Practice® curriculum at the Burnett School of Medicine as one of the keys to helping her make a lasting impression.
The Compassionate Practice ® has ingrained empathy and treating patients with compassion in her approach to care, she added.
“Going into a field that’s going to involve a lot of hard conversations with family members about the prognosis and diagnosis of their child is something I think I’m going to be able to take with me to residency,” Newell said.
Sameer Allahabadi, M.D.
Hometown: Glendora, California
Residency Program: Baylor University Medical Center
Specialty: Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
Sometimes there are things in life that seem like it all comes down to one moment in time. Walking across the stage during commencement inside TCU’s Schollmaier Arena as a medical school graduate is one of those moments for Sameer Allahabadi.
“It’s weird because you go through this journey and you put so much effort in it prior to going to medical school,” Allahabadi said. “It all comes down to this one moment. It’s surreal.”
Burnett School of Medicine students are introduced to Patient-Centered Inquiry Based Learning Based (PIBL) where they work in groups to find solutions to medical problems. Those were the moments where the bonds among the Class of 2023 began to form, according to Allahabadi.
“Some of my early study sessions with my classmate Will Mitchell, we kept getting destroyed by questions we didn’t really know the answers to. Working through this together are some of my most precious memories of medical school,” Allahabadi said.
Later, Allahabadi and Mitchell launched the Oncology Student Interest Group (SIG) at the medical school. Allahabadi always had an interest in the human muscular skeletal system and that was nurtured early on by his older brother who is an orthopedic surgeon.
However, he knew surgery was not the direction he would go.
“After a while, I kind of came back to physical medicine and rehab,” Allahabadi said. “Honestly, my first push into going into it was meeting the people in the specialty I felt right at home with my colleagues and future residents.”
He credits the early exposure to patients through LIC with helping him see how the things can work together.
“At some point, I was managing five to six patients on my own and it created this independence in me that’s what the school does best as well as communication skills,” Allahabadi said.
Will Mitchell, M.D.
Hometown: Kansas City, Kansas
Residency Program: University of California-Irvine Medical Center
“The bonds we created as a class are going to be my best memories at TCU,” Mitchell said. “I also was with the same LIC preceptor Dr. Craig Dearden for two and a half years and he was really instrumental in my growth as a physician, and he helped me learn how to communicate and just get better at being a doctor.”
A lot of his mentors that helped him get into medical school were anesthesiologists, he added.
“I almost came in like a teenager really angsty trying to go against the grain because it was all I had known,” Mitchell said. “I felt like there was more to medicine.”
He launched the Oncology SIG at the Burnett School of Medicine with his classmate Sameer Allahabadi as he explored other medical specialties. But as he went further along in his studies, he realized his true passion in medicine was pharmacology and physiology. Both are huge components of anesthesiology.
“I started kicking myself because for me to be the doctor that I really want to be I needed to give this a shot,” Mitchell said. “As soon as I did, I knew this was the field for me.”
Graduating from the medical school marks an end to Mitchell’s eight years at TCU that started in undergraduate studies.
“I think TCU really prides itself on training you up to be leaders in the national and global community,” Mitchell said. “It’s really exciting to be able to move on to the next step and know that TCU has prepared me to do exactly what I’m supposed to do.”
FORT WORTH – The inaugural class of medical students at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University took the Hippocratic Oath at the medical school’s first Hooding Ceremony. Department Chairs from the medical school placed the doctoral hood over the head of each of the Class of 2023 graduates, signifying their successful completion of the M.D. degree program.
The invitation-only ceremony was held on Friday, May 12 inside TCU’s Van Cliburn Concert Hall.
“Moving forward when you are wearing your hood at another graduation and someone asks, ‘Where did you go to medical school?’ You can proudly say TCU,” said Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. “You all are now forever Horned Frogs and TCU graduates.”
Lillie Biggins, RN, FACHE, former president of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, was the keynote speaker for the event. She told the medical students how listening to their patients would be crucial in their roles as physicians.
“I have had the privilege to care for those in need. You’ll find the strongest person in the world who thinks they have it going on and when illness hits them, they are just lost,” Biggins said. “People are just people and people need physicians. They need good physicians who have a heart to care. A heart to take care of people not from where they think the patient should be but where the patient is.”
During the ceremony, Will Mitchell, a graduating student at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, addressed the crowd as the inaugural Empathetic Scholar® award recipient after being nominated by his peers. He spoke about his experiences over the last four years at the medical school.
“We have all acted as servant leaders and Empathetic Scholars®,” Mitchell said. “I am proud to say that this statement rings true for each and every one of us as we have engaged in our medical school and the greater Fort Worth community.”
The Hooding Ceremony is a part of the annual commencement festivities. The history of the hooding ceremony dates to European universities in the 11th or 12th Century to distinguish students as they complete academic careers. Graduates of the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU wore purple gowns with black velvet. The regalia also included a Doctoral Tam, which following tradition is a soft tam.
The Doctoral Hood, worn around the neck and draping down the back, features the colors of the graduate’s university on the inside and the color of the academic discipline on the outside. For graduates of the Burnett School of Medicine, kelly green (representing medicine) adorns the hood.
“From this moment forward, you have been given the amazing honor and responsibility to care for others as a physician,” Dean Flynn said.
The Class of 2023 will make history on Saturday, May 13 during TCU’s Commencement by being the first class to graduate from the Burnett School of Medicine. The Commencement is set to take place at Schollmaier Arena as TCU celebrates its 150th year.
FORT WORTH – It’s Commencement Week! We are excited to celebrate our inaugural class as they celebrate completing their medical school journey.
As we enter a busy few days, we wanted to ensure that everyone knows where to find livestreams for our Hooding Ceremony on Friday, May 12th and TCU Commencement on Saturday, May 13th.
You can watch TCU’s Commencement Ceremony begins Saturday’s 9:00 am and can be streamed on the Texas Christian University YouTube page. Link to Saturday’s Commencement Stream: https://www.youtube.com/embed/FBXp5rpklh4
If you are planning to attend TCU Commencement in person visiting the TCU Commencement 2023 website to learn more about the event and the clear bag policy.
You can find us on the following social media channels:
We want to see your photos and videos from the festivities too! Make sure to tag our accounts and use the hashtags below so everyone can follow along! #BurnettCommencement2023 #BurnettHooding2023 #EmpatheticScholars #TCUGrad #TCU #LeadOnTCU
FORT WORTH – Second-year medical student Christopher Corona was selected into the 2023-2024 ElevateMeD Scholars Program and will receive a $16,500 scholarship.
ElevateMeD’s mission is to increase physician workforce diversity and improve cultural competence among physicians to reduce health disparities. Each Scholar will be awarded a tuition-based scholarship to alleviate their medical school debt burden for each year remaining in their medical degree in addition to physician mentorship, access to peer network support, leadership development opportunities, and financial management education. This year’s cohort features 15 new Scholars and 10 returning students from medical schools across the country. View a full list of the 2023-24 cohort here.
The innovative FAB curriculum is a way to embrace creativity in medicine, according to Emma Butler, MS-1 at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
“I didn’t realize how much I loved design thinking,” Butler said.
The first week of FAB is where the medical students use design thinking to focus on patient and provider needs while also prioritizing empathy. One of the mantras of the medical school is teaching students how to put patients at the center of everything they do.
“They all start with the same design challenge but it’s really interesting to see how deep each team goes into a certain area of medicine,” Grau said.
The medical students begin the week with a design sprint and an introduction to design thinking. They are put into eight different groups and tasked with creating a medical device or application for users of any age.
The challenge from Grau’s team at the Idea Factory to the medical students was to create something to improve health and fitness for a patient group of their choice. The students selected a wide range of groups for their projects such as children, former athletes with injuries, pregnant women, adults 70 and older and more.
The students spent the early part of the week in the Fort Worth community interviewing patients.
Butler’s team created a virtual reality headset for older adults experiencing chronic migraine headaches or ADHD symptoms. The headset would send visual and technical data to health care providers giving them a first-person view into what the patient is experiencing.
It’s an opportunity for the physician to be able to walk in the patient’s shoes, Butler added.
“One common theme we saw was that the patients don’t really understand why other people don’t get what they are going through,” Butler said.
The VR headset would also be equipped with different programs to help relieve migraines as an alternative to taking medications.
“For migraines, you can have a completely dark and encapsulating sound deficit you can use instead of having to take your onset medication, which can often make you tired and you can’t go about your daily living activities after taking them,” Butler said.
All of the groups met with the Idea Factory team afterwards in multiple ideation sessions before their final presentations, in poster form, at the end of the week.
“The posters they created really represent a prototype of their idea and what problem they are trying to solve and who they are trying to solve it for,” Grau said.
These are additional tools they can use as physicians on top of their medical knowledge, Grau added.
“Our mission at the medical school is to create Empathetic Scholars® and this really crystalizes that from an innovation perspective,” Grau said.
360 West’s Top Doctors survey is peer-reviewed and open to all doctors within Tarrant, Parker, Johnson Hood and Denton Counties. Fort Worth Magazine annually publishes an online ballot for Fort Worth-area physicians to vote on who they think are the best doctors. Every physician on their list is vetted through the Texas Medical Board for disciplinary history. More than two dozen physicians review the final list before making recommendations.
The list below shows our faculty physicians who made the list and identifies them by their specialty area.
Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, addressed the class during the presentations. The work that the students have put into these research projects benefit the Fort Worth medical community and also their growth as future physicians, he said.
“As you go through your career you’re going to encounter a study and you’re going to be much more critically able to discuss it,” Dean Flynn said. “Mentors have been great for you and you’ve been great for the mentors.”
Members of the graduating Class of 2023 presented their research projects on large posters for those in attendance. The projects covered a wide range of topics including diabetes, homelessness, brain trauma, opioids and pain treatment, cerebral palsy, compassion in medicine and much more.
“We start in the first year working with the students and their prospectus, which is like a small research grant for their project and finishing up with their thesis,” Michael Bernas, M.S., Associate Professor & Director of Scholarly, Pursuit and Thesis (SPT) Course at the Burnett School of Medicine.
Fort Worth businessman H. Paul Dorman, who generously funded the first year of tuition for the Class of 2023 known as the Dorman Scholars, was the guest speaker at the event. Dorman has made a career out of groundbreaking research in the medical field and shared some words of wisdom with the class.
“Doing research you don’t necessarily have to go after a new or better molecule,” Dorman said. “There may be ways to make an existing proven item work better and safer with less side effects.”
Here are the Scholarly, Pursuit & Thesis research projects that were presented:
Sameer Allahabadi
SPT Mentor: Christos Papdelis, Ph.D.
Research Project: Better Mapping and Characterization of Brain Plasticity Changes In Pediatric Patients with Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy Using Magnetoencephalography Combined with High-Density Electroencephalography and Diffusor Tensor Imaging
Mckenna Chalman
SPT Mentor: Ric Bonnell, M.D.
Research Project: Sleep and Exercise Among Incarcerated Youth: Establishing a Generalized Approach to Improve Sleep Quality/Quantity for Adolescents in the Juvenile Justice System
Arman Fijany
SPT Mentor: Robert Benkowski, MBA
Research Project: Pain Response Neuromodulation Via Optogenetic and Optical Stimulation
Kavneet Kaur
SPT Mentor: Erin Nelson, Psy.D., and Chase Crossno, MPH
Research Project: Compassion in Medicine: Assessing Physician Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue
Nathalie Scherer
SPT Mentor: David Capper, M.D.
Research Project: Barriers to Care in Homeless Patients with Diabetes Mellitus
More than 200 donors, key stakeholders, faculty, staff and students at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, construction crew members from Linbeck, designers from CO Architects and Hoefer Welker gathered in Fort Worth’s medical district for a “Topping Out” celebration.
“We could not do this without donors, trustees, civic and community leaders and our world class faculty, students and staff. TCU is an institution of innovation and in many ways our innovation is going to run right through the Burnett School of Medicine,” TCU President Daniel W. Pullin said at the celebration. “It really changes the face of TCU by squarely positioning ourself in this part of the community. It will allow us to connect and collaborate. We definitely want to be a strong community partner in this way and at every turn. It’s a way for our students to reach out and serve and really shape the future.”
When the new 100,000-square-foot medical education building opens in the Summer of 2024, it will the home for 240 medical students, hundreds of staff and faculty and an innovational simulation and technology space. It will also be the first educational building located outside of TCU’s main campus.
A “Topping Out” celebration is generally held when construction crews reach the highest level of a building.
“The ceremony is a long-standing tradition for the construction team to commemorate the completion of a building’s structure, specifically the placement of the final steel beam,” said Todd Waldvogel, P.E., Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities & Campus Planning at TCU.
Those in attendance were able to sign two of the final steel beams that were hoisted into the air and placed on top of the building.
The beams will be visible in the northwest corner of the building in the stair tower. The beams are uniquely designed from other supporting beams because they are white with the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU logo at the center. Once the building is completed anyone walking up the stair tower will be able to look up and see the beams.
“This is unusual, and special, as it signifies the importance of what will go on here,” Waldvogel said.
Another significant memento at the celebration was a pine tree , which was placed on the roof of the building and will be visible from miles away.
The pine tree is a symbol that dates back to 8th century Scandinavia, according to Brooke Reusch, Director of Project Management at TCU.
“It started out as a new pine tree being placed at a construction project and when the pine needles started falling off the tree construction crews knew it was time to be able to close the building because the timber inside was secured and dried out,” Ruesch said.
For many at the event it was their first time to be inside of the space and get a feel for the size of the building.
“It’s a rare opportunity for it to be safe enough and clean enough to have this kind of event,” Reusch said. “It will be really cool for the students to be able to sit in the Learning Studio at this point and see it as this open structure.”
“Knowing that we will get the opportunity to learn and study in a building that has been designed with us in mind is pretty incredible,” Hui said. “This is where future physicians will learn what it truly means to be an Empathetic Scholar® and a compassionate physician.”
