Impact on Research

Summer is a time of preparation for new medical students and orientation of junior and senior medical students to clinical rotations.
At least 200 new undergraduate medical students’ orientation to the school and Memorial Hermann Hospital (MHH) will be delayed.
825 medical students will be on campus in August; all student service functions are on the ground floor of the medical school – this floor is estimated to be at least nine months away from re-opening. These offices are currently spread across the TMC in borrowed or leased space.
First year students must begin gross anatomy courses; the gross anatomy lab was completely destroyed. There is no current estimate when that part of the building will be back in operation. We are scrambling to find appropriate and ample space in which to teach these 300 medical and dental students.
Classroom space for the medical students was already at maximum utilization; with the temporary loss of space in the basement and ground floors, classes will be dispersed across the city of Houston.
The bookstore, Student Health Center, Learning Resource Center, cafeteria, and fitness center are closed for at least a month and displaced for at least nine months.
MHH is the primary clinical affiliate of the Medical School. The hospital will not re-open until at least mid-July disrupting the residency programs for 825 medical students including 250 first-year students.
The current 550 residents, most assigned to MHH, have been sent to hospitals all across Houston. They are under the supervision of faculty who have only emergency privileges at these locations.
The additional 96 continuing graduate students who inhabited the building are finding their research at risk. Some of the more senior students may have lost their dissertation research due to flood damage. This may set back their careers indefinitely.
Over 120 undergraduate students from colleges and universities across the state were to be enrolled in internship programs in the Medical School; these programs have been cancelled due to the loss and displacement of the labs.
For the past two weeks and continuing until the school is back to normal operations, 22 academic departments are being run from homes and borrowed offices across the city.

For questions or comments contact Dawna Jarvis
created June 26, 2001