Message from the Executive Director
History of Medicine Lecture: HIV Out Loud
Commencement: Past and Present
Meet Our Team: Dana Whitmire
Connective Tissue Exhibit
Featured eBook of the Month: HIV/AIDS in Memory, Culture and Society
On Saturday, May 17, 2025, more than 880 students of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio will cross a commencement 
stage in the Alamodome and step into their futures as health care professionals.
Commencement Day is always my favorite day on campus! I love seeing the graduates in their caps and gowns looking elated and relieved. And the beaming parents and proud family members always gets to me. It is the day that our students strive for, the day their professional careers as health care professionals are launched, and the day they can celebrate an incredible accomplishment.
We have included some historical photographs from past commencements in this issue and hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Each graduate is a part of the history of this amazing institution and a testament to the dedication of our faculty and staff who recruit, teach, mentor, support, and guide them in their studies and clinical experiences. We offer our appreciation to the dedicated faculty and staff who help our students succeed.
The Library team sees students in the library every day throughout their academic journey – collaborating in groups on projects or studying together, immersed in solo reading and study preparing for tests and licensure exams, eating lunch with friends, taking a breather to participate in Library and Student Life events, or view one of our exhibits. Their dedication and work ethic inspire us and the work we do to provide them with a safe, welcoming space, and services to support their learning and research. We have no doubt they will make their way in the world and make lives better. We in the Libraries have loved being a part of their journey.
We congratulate each and every one of 1,162 graduating students who will earn degrees at the conclusion of this 2024 – 2025 academic year!
Pat Hawthorne, Executive Director of Libraries
Presented by Dr. Rachel Pearson and Dr. Yolanda Crous
This presentation introduces HIV Out Loud, a collaborative project between community members, medical students, and the P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library. The project explores the critical role of stigma in the ongoing HIV epidemic and highlights how public history can be used as a tool for change.
By training medical students as oral historians and partnering with people living with HIV to share their stories, HIV Out Loud builds a digital archive that humanizes the epidemic and reshapes medical education.
This lecture explores how storytelling and historical preservation can foster empathy, reduce stigma, and contribute to ending the HIV epidemic.
The lecture will take place over Zoom. Register for the lecture.
Rachel Pearson, MD PhD, is the Humanities Director at the Charles E. Cheever, Jr. Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, where she teaches literature and the arts and leads the HIV Out Loud project. She is also a hospital pediatrician at UT Health San Antonio. As a civic humanist, Dr. Pearson publishes essays on medicine and the medical humanities for general readers in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer and elsewhere. Her book No Apparent Distress: A Doctor's Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine was published by WW Norton in 2019.
Yolanda Crous, MD, is a second year Psychiatry Resident at the University of Texas Health San Antonio with a long-standing interest in the medical humanities and medical stigma. She has been involved with the HIV Out Loud project since she was a first-year medical student at the Long School of Medicine.
To celebrate Commencement, we're sharing pictures of commencements of the past We'd like to wish all our Health Science Center graduates the best in their future careers! We know you'll make lives better!
Images provided by the P.I. Nixon Library and Melissa DeThorne, Archives Assistant.
To celebrate Commencement, we're sharing pictures of commencements of the past We'd like to wish all our Health Science Center graduates the best in their future careers! We know you'll make lives better!
Images provided by the P.I. Nixon Library and Melissa DeThorne, Archives Assistant.
To celebrate Commencement, we're sharing pictures of commencements of the past We'd like to wish all our Health Science Center graduates the best in their future careers! We know you'll make lives better!
Images provided by the P.I. Nixon Library and Melissa DeThorne, Archives Assistant.
To celebrate Commencement, we're sharing pictures of commencements of the past We'd like to wish all our Health Science Center graduates the best in their future careers! We know you'll make lives better!
Images provided by the P.I. Nixon Library and Melissa DeThorne, Archives Assistant.
To celebrate Commencement, we're sharing pictures of commencements of the past We'd like to wish all our Health Science Center graduates the best in their future careers! We know you'll make lives better!
Images provided by the P.I. Nixon Library and Melissa DeThorne, Archives Assistant.
Hello! I'm Dana Whitmire, Electronic Resources Librarian.
I was raised in San Antonio, TX and have worked at UT Health San Antonio Library since 2007. I graduated from the University of North Texas with a master's in library science. I also have a Bachelor of Arts in English from Schreiner University.
Describe yourself in three words.
Inquisitive; Analytical; Productive
What is your role at the library?
As the Electronic Resources Librarian, I serve as the point of contact for electronic journals, books, and databases. This area of work includes subscriptions, licensing, and maintenance. I also oversee Interlibrary Loan and manage the library website, LibGuides, and publishing discounts.
What do you like best about working at UT Health?
A wide range of duties keeps work from feeling monotonous collaborating with my peers the puzzles that come along with managing electronic resources. Each day brings a new challenge
What are you reading, listening to, or watching?
Currently listening to audiobook: Heretical Fishing: A Cozy Guide to Annoying the Cults, Outsmarting the Fish, and Alienating Oneself.
My go-to podcast is Ologies, where I learn fun facts about subjects ranging from the human body to Tasmanian devils.
This year's Connective Tissue exhibit pay's homage to the age-old tradition of gathering around the hearth, where stories pass from one generation to the next, each thread woven with memories, wisdom, and emotion. The hearth symbolizes not just the literal warmth of a fire but family, community, and identity; a place where personal histories and collective experiences meet to nourish the soul.
The hearth also parallels the compassion and healing found in healthcare environments: just as stories shared by the fire offer comfort and connection, the narratives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers form the heart of clinical practice. It is where shared stories — of illness, recovery, and resilience — create bonds, offer solace, and bring light to even the most difficult moments.
This year's Connective Tissue exhibit pay's homage to the age-old tradition of gathering around the hearth, where stories pass from one generation to the next, each thread woven with memories, wisdom, and emotion. The hearth symbolizes not just the literal warmth of a fire but family, community, and identity; a place where personal histories and collective experiences meet to nourish the soul.
The hearth also parallels the compassion and healing found in healthcare environments: just as stories shared by the fire offer comfort and connection, the narratives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers form the heart of clinical practice. It is where shared stories — of illness, recovery, and resilience — create bonds, offer solace, and bring light to even the most difficult moments.
This year's Connective Tissue exhibit pay's homage to the age-old tradition of gathering around the hearth, where stories pass from one generation to the next, each thread woven with memories, wisdom, and emotion. The hearth symbolizes not just the literal warmth of a fire but family, community, and identity; a place where personal histories and collective experiences meet to nourish the soul.
The hearth also parallels the compassion and healing found in healthcare environments: just as stories shared by the fire offer comfort and connection, the narratives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers form the heart of clinical practice. It is where shared stories — of illness, recovery, and resilience — create bonds, offer solace, and bring light to even the most difficult moments.
This year's Connective Tissue exhibit pay's homage to the age-old tradition of gathering around the hearth, where stories pass from one generation to the next, each thread woven with memories, wisdom, and emotion. The hearth symbolizes not just the literal warmth of a fire but family, community, and identity; a place where personal histories and collective experiences meet to nourish the soul.
The hearth also parallels the compassion and healing found in healthcare environments: just as stories shared by the fire offer comfort and connection, the narratives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers form the heart of clinical practice. It is where shared stories — of illness, recovery, and resilience — create bonds, offer solace, and bring light to even the most difficult moments.
HIV/AIDS in Memory, Culture and SocietyBook Description from the Publisher
This volume examines the role of culture in developing social, cultural and political discourses of HIV/AIDS from a contemporary viewpoint. In doing so, the memory of HIV/AIDS is a powerful tool to examine representations of the past and connect them with future debates.
This reassessment of HIV/AIDS explores the most appropriate way to come to terms with a past that involved a negative, stigmatized and marginalized representation. Therefore, remembering plays a key role in generating collective memory, which allows for the exchange of mnemonic content between individual minds, creates discourses on memory and commemoration, and disseminates versions of the past that may affect the representation of HIV/AIDS in the future.
Indeed, rewriting about the past also means assessing our responsibility towards the present and the potential of transmission to future generations, especially in times of pandemics.
Check out the book through the Springer Nature eBook Collection, provided by the Briscoe Library.
If you have a title you would like to recommend, please let us know by emailing Kelley Minars at minars@uthscsa.edu