The School of Graduate Studies and Mississippi’s Future Scientists

Good morning.

With the spring semester truly in full swing, today I want to shine a light on one of our seven health professional schools.

The mission of our School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences is to train the next generation of biomedical scientists, health care professionals and educators, foster the spirit of scientific inquiry and promote an environment that embraces diversity and cultural differences.

Currently, there are about 250 graduate students enrolled in eight PhD and two Master’s programs. More than 300 faculty train these students in physiology, pharmacology, microbiology and other biomedical and clinical sciences. Dr. Joey Granger (himself an alumnus) has served as dean of SGSHS since 2007, the longest tenure of UMMC’s current deans. Under his leadership, the school has achieved so much.

While SGSHS accepts high-quality students from around the world, we’re proud of the work the school has done to recruit and train Mississippians. About half of entering PhD students over the past several years have been Mississippi residents. The SGSHS is also focused on recruiting a diverse group of students. For instance, the 2021 Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences class was 50 percent non-white, which helps create a pool of diverse applicants for professional schools (more on that later).

Once accepted, the PhD students are a driving force in our research efforts. The SGSHS allows them to devote considerable time to their dissertation projects under the supervision of a mentor. The work they do in the laboratory contributes to grant proposals and publications that form the basis for extramural funding, which UMMC received at record levels last year! Their research focuses on health conditions that disproportionately affect Mississippians: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, preeclampsia, substance use, dementia, cancers and infectious diseases.

One point of pride for the school is the time-to-graduation for PhD students. Research-based doctoral programs have some variability between schools in time students take to complete their requirements. The SGSHS has a median time of just over five years compared to the national 5.7 years. That means our students graduate about a semester faster, which allows them to move to the next stage of their careers faster.

And when these PhD graduates reach that next stage, they are well prepared and well recruited. Some of our most recent graduates have accepted postgraduate training positions at Vanderbilt, the University of California-San Francisco, Boston Children’s Hospital and the University of Michigan. We’ve also seen graduates find faculty jobs quickly, especially among our clinical anatomy alumni, who are specifically trained to teach in health professional programs.

While the PhD students spend the most time in the SGSHS, the largest program by class size is the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences. Ten years ago, we started this program to help give students a leg up in their path to becoming physicians, dentists, scientists or other professionals. More than half of these graduates go on to professional school. It is a substantial contributor to other Medical Center schools: almost one-quarter of the School of Dentistry class of 2024 and one-eighth of the School of Medicine class of 2024 are graduates of this program.

Over the past several years, SGSHS has played a major role in training clinician-scientists. These health care professionals also conduct research, whether that’s clinical trials, translational studies or pre-clinical “bench” research. There is a shortage of such specifically-trained providers nationwide, and especially so in Mississippi. The school uses several programs to remedy this. The newest is a PhD track designed for medical residents. Created in 2019, it is one of only two such formalized programs in the nation that offer a combined residency and doctoral work. Led by Dr. Candace Howard-Claudio in the Department of Radiology, the program currently has two residents working towards PhDs focused on bio-imaging. Both of them have received national recognition for their research. We plan on expanding this program to other residency programs at UMMC.

Other clinician-scientist training pathways SGSHS runs or contributes to include:
     •  an MD-PhD degree program in collaboration with the School of Medicine
     •  a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation, which trains physicians and other doctoral-level professionals in research
     •  providing mentors for the Medical Student Research Program

The SGSHS’s Discovery U activities keep a flowing pipeline of potential students for UMMC. Reaching metro-area students from kindergarten through 12th grade, Discovery U also includes the Summer Undergraduate Research Program, SURE for short. For 10 weeks each summer, our research labs become the home of dozens of Mississippi and beyond college students who conduct research alongside our faculty and staff. It’s a wonderful recruitment tool for SGSHS and for our other schools.

Every day, we are so thankful for the faculty, staff and students in the SGSHS who put in so much time and effort to help UMMC build A Healthier Mississippi.