An evolution of Admissions

Dr. Gunn steps down after 27 years

By Darla Brown

When Albert Gunn, M.D., Esq., started working at The University of Texas Medical School in 1976, he was a preceptor in physical diagnosis, trying to recruit students away from the Medical School to an off-site rotation.

"I was the medical director of M. D. Anderson's rehabilitation center and wanted to liven the center up with some students – so I came to the Medical School," he recalls. "It was a great fit, the students liked the center and learned a lot, and the patients were energized by the young students."

After a couple of years as course director, Dr. Gunn soon moved to a different role in recruitment – as dean of admissions – a position he is now stepping down from after 27 years.

Back in 1979, the landscape was quite different from today's – for one, Dr. Gunn was officed in the John Freeman Building, which is now a memory.

"Back then, there was so much space that each of the medical students also had their own office in the John Freeman Building," he recalls.

Today, space is at a premium both in the Medical School and in the Texas Medical Center, whose official bird has been deemed the construction crane by Interim Dean Jerry Wolinsky, M.D. In the Freeman Building's place rises the nearly completed six-story Replacement Research Facility, with glass peeking through most of its rectangular eyes.

Class sizes have grown to 220 students, with equal representation from men and women, although the hairstyles and fashion seem to harken back to the '70s. While the admissions process itself is conceptually the same – there are still nervous interviews with faculty and grand tours of facilities – the system itself has undergone a high-tech evolution during Dr. Gunn's tenure.

"Back when I first started, there was just one computer, a mainframe computer, and it was in Austin," he explains. "That used to generate the printouts of our entering classes. I would have to go to the Greyhound Bus terminal to pick up the class list, and then the secretaries had to type out the list by hand to generate the acceptance letters. Even the Xerox machine had to be fed by hand.

"But we didn't make any error."

After fetching the envelope from the bus depot, Dr. Gunn says that everyone would pour over it at the office, studying it and trying to recall which names matched with whom. "It was always a big surprise to see who we got each year," he remembers.