EDINBURG — The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine’s new dean polished of his first week leading the institution Friday.
Dr. Michael Hocker, who started last Monday, bookended his first week with meetings: first with faculty and staff early in the week and on Friday with new students from the incoming medical school class.
“The people are really what makes this place amazing,” Hocker said. “All the folks in the Valley, trying to put names with faces and understand their role. I’m here to serve them and work on their behalf; they’re not here to work for me.”
A first generation college graduate from a humble background, Hocker served as a Navy flight surgeon before going on to work in medical academia. He spent 14 years at Duke University School of Medicine, starting an emergency medicine training program, and most recently held the J. Harold Harrison M.D. Distinguished Chair in Emergency Medicine and the position of designated institutional official and senior associate dean at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, where he oversaw 51 residency and fellowship programs.
Hocker’s path to the deanship at UTRGV SOM was hardly predictable: the post found him more than he found it. Four or five months ago he got a call from a recruiter who he had met when he’d looked at job opportunities several years ago.
“I don’t know why she necessarily remembered me, but she reached out to me and said what she thought was the perfect job for me,” he said. “Being skeptical of all recruiters, I said ‘Yeah, right, send me it.’ And I opened it up and wouldn’t you know it was from UTRGV.”
UTRGV was a familiar institution for Hocker. He has family in the Valley who have been telling him about the university and its medical school — telling him he oughta find a job there. A fan of warm weather and wanting to be close to family, Hocker decided to give it a shot.
“I threw my name in the hat, went through the interview process and couldn’t be happier to be at what I would describe as an evolving medical school at a really critical time,” he said.
Hocker is joining the institution at an interesting juncture. The school has more students, staff and clinics than ever, and it has a more visible role than ever too, having served an active role responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, despite its growth, the school of medicine is still a toddler: it’s only graduated two classes and it’s still in the process of getting accredited.
Hocker’s number one priority as incoming dean? He says it’ll be to get to the end of that accreditation process.
“I would say probably number one, two and three is moving this medical school toward full accreditation,” he said. “We received notification just over a week ago that we received provisional accreditation, and it’s definitely a journey to get a medical school accredited, but we need to get the football across the proverbial goal line.”
That accreditation will allow the school to increase its class size and most importantly, develop more innovative programs he says can be geared toward making students in South Texas, Hocker said.
“Rural communities, small communities —especially in SouthTexas — and one of the things this school does is bring up a workforce which we can get to come to medical school here, stay and train here and ultimately practice here,” he said.
Moving the school’s clinical and education missions forward will be a long term goal, Hocker said, along with nurturing the school’s research endeavors.
“I think being an academic medical center we’re interested just in education and clinical care, but in research and discovery,” he said. “So, how can we better take care of the residents of the Rio Grande Valley?”
To accomplish those goals, Hocker says he’ll rely on that servant-leader mentality. He says he’s a people person, and he’ll build ties with students, staff and community stakeholders to move the school forward.
“I’m really about the service I can provide through leadership,” he said. “And really try to be inclusive and transparent with my folks, and really value who the people are; make sure that they’re supported so that they can do their jobs. As dean you’re over all the different missions, and it’s connecting people, communicating, and really developing relationships is important to me. So I guess I’m called somewhat of a relationship-leader.”
