From left: UTMB President David Callender, Dr. Courtney Townsend, and John Kelso, president of The Sealy & Smith Foundation.
The Sealy & Smith Foundation recently contributed $1 million to establish an endowed chair in honor of Dr. Courtney M. Townsend Jr.
Townsend, who earned his medical degree and completed his internship and residency in surgery at UTMB, recently was named the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons at its recent 2015 clinical conference in Chicago. He served as UTMB’s Chair of Surgery from 1995 to 2014.
The new Sealy & Smith endowment is named the Courtney M. Townsend Jr., M.D., Distinguished Chair in General Surgery.
“This new distinguished chair is a most fitting tribute to Dr. Townsend, who brings the UTMB mission to life with his long service to health sciences education, discovery and compassionate care,” Dr. David L. Callender, UTMB president, said. “We are grateful to The Sealy & Smith Foundation for this generous gift to the future of health care.”
Townsend has served as editor-in-chief of the “Sabiston Textbook of Surgery: The Biological Basis of Modern Surgical Practice” since 2000 and was the editor of “Surgical Oncology.” He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, the journal Surgery and The American Journal of Surgery.
Upon graduation, Townsend completed a surgical oncology fellowship at the University of California–Los Angeles and spent two years at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He joined UTMB as an associate professor, department of surgery in 1978 before rising to the position of department chair.