Q&A: Former Dean and longtime Austin employees reflect on the location’s journey

Published: September 11, 2024

Through the eyes of longtime friends and employees, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin has traced the journey from its modest beginnings to its current state-of-the-art facility. These personal accounts highlight successes and challenges, milestones, and the evolving vision that has shaped this vital public health institution in Central Texas. 

Dr. Guy Parcel | Dean Emeritus, Former School of Public Health Dean 

Q: You were one of the original Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) founders. Tell our readers about expectations and goals when you helped start this project, and how it led to the development of the School of Public Health in Austin. 

A: CATCH was a multi-center study done nationwide. UTHealth Houston School of Public Health carried out that study in Austin in partnership with the Department of Kinesiology at UT-Austin. Because of that relationship, we were able to get space within UT-Austin and begin building partnerships and relationships within the UT-Austin campus while we began to plan for regional public health programs in Austin. 

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation was, at the time, interested in developing childhood obesity prevention programs that were effective and sustainable over time. They contacted me to discuss what we had been doing with CATCH programs and how CATCH could be expanded into a community-based program for childhood obesity prevention. 

We explained that we were interested in a broader community program that could address obesity prevention as well as other child & adolescent health needs in the Central Texas region. That led to the idea of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, the funding for which enabled us to establish a community-based research program while we developed the more formal proposal for the Austin location. 

The Center for Healthy Living and Austin location were coming together at the same time. What we had to do was go through the UT System approval process for the program in Austin, which meant we had to find what degrees we would offer and justify the need for the educational program — the Center provided the educational basis for the degrees. In addition, the Austin program has been able to partner with UT-Austin undergraduate programs in public health to provide a pathway for undergraduate Longhorns to go right into a postgraduate graduate degree program while staying in the same community. 

Q: As a former dean for the School of Public Health, describe what it’s like to see the Austin location grow and move into this new space. 

A: It’s very rewarding to see that the School of Public Health can offer public health education and training and research projects throughout the state of Texas, that the university can meet some of the public health needs that couldn’t be met without the establishment of these programs. It’s great to see the regional program in Austin mature and become a primary resource for public health education and research in Central Texas as the different locations allow people to stay in their communities while earning an education without having to move to Houston. 

It’s especially important to have a location in Austin because the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and Dell Medical School at UT-Austin are both located in Austin. Having a more permanent building provides a clear opportunity to work collaboratively with the state department and UT-Austin's graduate medical school to provide a strong public health component. 

Heather Atteberry, MPH | First student graduate assistant at the Austin location 

Q: What was your experience like as the Austin location’s first student GA? 

A: This was my first job working in public health, and it was a great experience. I learned a lot about the different fields within public health thanks to the relationships I built with the faculty who helped start the campus. I was also involved in a lot of meetings with community partners and was able to use those introductions to build my own relationships that would be helpful in my future roles at the School of Public Health. 

I was hired to support Dr. Deanna Hoelscher’s [regional dean, Austin location and director, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living] research, so I worked with the CATCH and Texas SPAN teams, and helped with the grant submission for the T-COPPE project. Tiffni Menendez [associate director of research and development] was my supervisor, and she showed me the ropes on project management for research projects and how to manage with compassion. I still come to her regularly for advice and appreciate her mentorship throughout the years. 

Thanks to the growth of the campus and research in Austin, there are many more opportunities for students to work on projects as a GRA or to teach as a TA. It’s invaluable experience if you want to work in the field and learn from some of the best public health researchers in the state.  

Q: How did you support the move into the new building at 1836 San Jacinto Blvd.? 

A: I was one of the representatives from the location who supported the move from start to finish. We toured spaces, met with the architects and builders, worked with UTHealth Houston’s Facilities group, picked out furniture, thought through all the challenges of moving 3 buildings into one space, and basically anything else that was needed so the process could be a smooth transition. 

Q: We have had several old offices. Please describe the experience of moving through the offices. What has improved and changed each time? 

A: No one loves moving, but usually when we needed to move to a new space, it was because we were growing.  Over the years, I’ve moved from a cube to a small office, back to a cube, back to an office. Each building is a new experience, but every time, we tried to make our spaces better for learning, working, and community. 

I believe this new building has done just that. We have a space for our students to learn and work together, we have all our faculty and staff in one space with the equipment we need for our work, and we can share all of this with the community while continuing to improve health in Central Texas. It’s been pretty cool to be a small part of this. 

Jerri Berry, MA, RDN | Research associate in charge of the Austin Teaching Kitchen 

Q: Describe your early days with the Austin location. 

A: During the CATCH study (1991-1994), staff was housed in the Social Work building. Dr. Hoelscher had an office there that was about the size of a small closet.  She was my adviser for my master's degree, and it was hard to fit 2 chairs in her office. Sandra  van den Berg [associate director, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living] of the worked there and was working on her PhD. 

I worked on the CATCH Project Tracking Study and School-Based Nutrition Monitoring (SBNM), with Drs. Hoelscher, Kelder, and Polly Edmundson. Dr. van den Berg helped us collect data for some of SBNM, and Dr. Monica Meadows from UT-Austin helped us too before she got her PhD. 

When I started at UTHealth Houston in 1995, the Austin office was in UA9, a UT-Austin building at 2609 University Avenue. Drs. Hoelscher & Steve Kelder [professor, School of Public Health in Austin; past member, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living Executive Committee; lead investigator, CATCH] were in Houston at that point. We each had our own separate dial-up modems to connect to the Internet. 

At some point, we moved to a rented office space on 183 (Research Blvd, Austin) just west of Lamar on the south side of 183 near the Toyota Dealership. We shared the building with a dentist, and the space we rented was formerly a pain specialist's office. The offices were examination rooms. We had to obtain all of our furniture from UT-Austin Surplus. We went to the Surplus Warehouse and picked out used desks and chairs, among other items. We moved it all ourselves. 

We had a small step up every move. The next office was on Executive Center Drive just south of Spicewood Springs and west of Mopac. Again, we moved our own furniture. The offices were better for sure and there were some nice windows, but my office had pink paint on the walls. Again, Drs. Hoelscher, Kelder, and Nancy Murray mainly were the PIs. I remember meeting Dr. Andrew Springer around this time. 

Projects here were IMPACT, Texas SPAN, Pass & CATCH, and CATCH Nutrition Plus. 

Q: What about the new space, a more permanent spot, excites you? 

A: The things I like best about the new building are the natural light, that we are all together in one space, and the proximity to UT-Austin and downtown Austin. The changes from our humble origins to now are so vast that there's a lot to like about the new space.  

Q: What do you think are the next steps for the Austin location and Center? 

A: Since I'm in charge of the Teaching Kitchen (TK), I'm interested in the following vision that I copied from a research paper: 

“The conceptual origins of modern-day TKs relate to tenets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The two main principles, attributed to China’s first emperor, Huang Di, are: (1) prevention is always superior to intervention; and (2) the ways we eat, move and think (control our thoughts and emotions) predictably influence our health and determine our recuperative capacity. These insights, codified by Chinese authors 24 centuries ago, promote the idea that optimal health and wellbeing are more likely to occur if one learns how to eat, move and think more healthfully." 

Stay tuned for pictures from our formal Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, an event that will celebrate our exciting new space, and for responses from Carolyn Smith and Drs. van den Berg and Kelder. 

Written by Kirsten Handler, communication specialist at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin.