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t m c » p u l s e | s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 9 35 Denis DeBakey, son of Michael E. DeBakey. "He thought that it was important for all young people in Houston to have access to a school that could prepare them for health professions. He wanted the school to look like Houston and have the same diversity that Houston had." Nearly 50 years later, DeBakey's vision has come to fruition, and some graduates of the state's top-rated public high school have remained in the medical center. Ronald Timothy Cotton, M.D., valedictorian of the Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions class of 1998, is now an assistant professor in the division of abdominal transplantation in the Michael E. DeBakey department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. "I'm from Houston and I grew up about a mile away from the school, so I always knew about it," Cotton said. "I was inspired to go to medical school by my uncle. He was the first physician in my family and his medical and surgical education kind of coincided with me growing up. I thought what he was doing was the greatest thing on earth. I went into high school thinking I had an inter- est in medicine and the school really fostered it from there." Cotton still remembers the first time he saw a human heart beating in a patient's open chest; he and other students were shadowing a physician at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. "I remember like yesterday going with a cardiologist at MD Anderson at the time, him having to do an intraoperative ultrasound of the heart during an open heart surgery. He took us in there with him and I remember … looking at the heartbeat in front of me with the chest open and it was just amazing," Cotton said. "You don't know what you don't see and I think that's what the high school represents with those early exposures and high, rigorous standards and access to higher education. It shows you what you can be. No matter where you are from or what your background is, you can see that and aspire to something bigger than where you are at the time." In addition to the opportunity to shadow practicing care provid- ers in the medical center, students at DeBakey High are subject to a rigorous curriculum and clinical rotations. Agnes Perry, the school's fourth principal, explained that students are now required to complete five years of math, at least one advanced science course, three years of a foreign language and four years of health science. Judith Campbell, M.D., a graduate of the class of 1977, now serves as the medical director of infection control and prevention at Texas Children's Hospital. She is also a professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Campbell dreamed of attending the high school after watching a documentary about it while living in Chicago. As fate would have it, her father was trans- ferred to Houston in 1973 and she began classes at the school the next fall. ➟ JUDITH CAMPBELL, M.D. Class of 1977 PROFESSION | Medical director of infection control and prevention at Texas Children's Hospital and professor in the section of infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. Today, Campbell is in charge of preparing Texas Children's for the deadliest of disease outbreaks. She believes her microbiology class in high school paved the way for her future career. "One of my favorite classes in high school was microbiology and that is a class that would not have ordinarily been offered in the '70s in any other high school," Campbell said. "I was able to study bacteria in high school and that is really an integral part of what I do as an infectious disease physician and infection control professional. I study germs, so I think very fondly of Mrs. Charlotte Bryant, who taught that class in high school."