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Longtime Educator’s Gift to Help Students Aiming for Careers in Health Professions
Ariel Cox, a researcher in psychiatry, works with equipment in the Translational Research Center. Photo by Joe Ellis/UMMC

Dr. Thomas Houston, a University of Mississippi alumnus with a 45-year career as a family medicine educator and tobacco control advocate, made a major gift in support of Ole Miss students who want to similarly devote their lives to careers in health professions.

The physician’s $300,000 gift established the Thomas Houston M.D. Health Professions Scholarship Endowment and will benefit UM College of Liberal Arts students who have participated in the university’s Health Professions Advising Office.

Dr. Thomas Houston

“It’s clear that students who take advantage of the office’s guidance and counseling are committed to a future in the health sciences and have a great chance of being accepted to graduate studies in health-related fields, thus making them ideal candidates for the scholarship,” said Houston, who lives in Dublin, Ohio.

“I hope these scholarships will help students in the health sciences complete their goals of finishing their work at Ole Miss and enter further studies in careers devoted to health and health care,” said the donor who earned BA and MD degrees from Ole Miss and the University Medical Center in 1973 and 1977 respectively.

UM’s Health Professions Advising Office counsels students on available health care career opportunities and guides them toward a competitive application for graduate-level education.

“We take their aspirations and help them to become the best candidate for professional school,” said the office’s director Sovent Taylor who expressed gratitude for the major gift. “Thanks to Dr. Houston, students from rural Mississippi who are aiming for degrees in medicine, dentistry, public health, and health research fields can now have financial assistance to help them realize their dream of becoming health care professionals.”

Why rural Mississippians?

“I am from Sylvarena, Mississippi, a little village of about 100 in Smith County,” Houston said. “I know first-hand that rural students often have fewer resources and advantages compared with others and wanted to reward rural students who have chosen health science careers.”

Essentially, Houston hopes these small-town students will one day realize success in following their career arch.

After graduating from medical school, Houston completed his residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in family medicine and had a 10-year career in academic family medicine that began at Ohio State University and continued at medical schools in Georgia and Kansas. In 1990 he was recruited by the American Medical Association to lead their tobacco control and public health advocacy programs. He received the U.S. Surgeon General’s Medallion for his work in tobacco control and has received several awards for teaching and other accomplishments in family medicine and public health.

Sovent Taylor

From 2003 to 2005, he held the Jim Finks Endowed Chair in Health Promotion at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and was professor of family medicine and public health.

“After Hurricane Katrina our family moved back to Ohio, where I was on staff at the McConnell Heart Health Center in Columbus,” he said. There, he worked in preventive cardiology, directed tobacco cessation and policy initiatives for OhioHealth, and founded a nationally certified Tobacco Treatment Specialist Training Program at The Breathing Association, a local health charity, to help medical professionals, counselors and therapists assist their patients in becoming tobacco free.

Now retired from clinical practice, he’s an adjunct professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Ohio State University and is active in medical writing, editing and consulting while participating in volunteer work locally and nationally.

Houston has written numerous journal articles, chapters, and monographs, and made presentations at many national and international conferences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Preventive Medicine and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago and is past president of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians.

At Ole Miss, Houston was a Carrier Scholar, president of the biology club and installing officer for Beta Beta Beta (biology honorary society) when it was reinstated in 1977. Additionally, he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Delta (premedical honorary), president of the Wesley Foundation and a member of Delta Psi fraternity.

He also played trumpet as part of the Pride of the South marching band all four years. In fact, those trumpet skills led to his now 41-year marriage.

“Cheryn and I met in a community band in Columbus, Ohio,” the donor recalled. “She was a professional flutist and music educator at the time, and she continued to do so until becoming a full-time mom several years after we were married.” Their son, Stephen, is a senior software engineer for a firm in Columbus.

The couple enjoys traveling, gardening, cooking, hiking and music.

The Thomas Houston M.D. Health Professions Scholarship Endowment is open to gifts from individuals and organizations by mailing a check to the University of Mississippi Foundation, with the endowment’s name noted in the memo line, to 406 University Ave., Oxford, MS 38655; or click here.

For more information, contact Delia Childers, director of development for the College of Liberal Arts, at dgchilde@olemiss.eduor 662-915-3086.

By Bill Dabney/UM Foundation

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