When he was in high school, Gordon Schutze, MD, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. He would teach high school history and coach football.
He did become an educator. He received the 2022 Barbara and Corbin J. Robertson Jr. Presidential Award for Excellence in Education at Baylor College of Medicine.
He is Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Dean of the School of Medicine, Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Executive Vice President of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Texas Children’s Hospital (BIPAI).
His plans for high school history and football changed during the summer he was 16. The change began while he was volunteering with Amigos de las Americas in rural Bolivia, where he was vaccinating children against measles. When he watched the birth of a baby, Dr. Schutze decided to become a pediatrician.
While he pursued his bachelor’s degree at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, he worked during summers in hospitals, two years in respiratory therapy and two years in the operating room.
He received his medical degree at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at Lubbock and began his pediatrics residency at Baylor College of Medicine at Texas Children’s Hospital. Once again, he “knew” exactly what he wanted to do: primary care in South Texas, along the border with Mexico.
“Then, in February of my internship year, when we were taking a lot of calls and working a lot of nights, I said, ‘One thing I’m not going to be is a general pediatrician.’ So I had to figure out what to do,” he recalls. “The infectious disease specialists were such good clinicians — they did a great physical exam. They were so smart and great teachers. I wanted to be like them.”
After completing his residency and pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Baylor-Texas Children’s, Dr. Schutze joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)-Arkansas Children’s Hospital in 1991.
“There were only four pediatric infectious diseases specialists for the whole state,” Dr. Schutze said. “We were serving mostly rural and underserved communities. I knew every pediatrician in the state, and the children’s hospital there was wonderful.”
At UAMS, he was Program Director for the general pediatrics residency and started a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship program. He earned the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
“When you are teaching and you see the light click on in the learner’s eyes, that feeling is pretty addictive. Helping people find their passion and achieve their goals drives me,” Dr. Schutze said. “The relationships that you develop when you’re leading an educational program last forever. You build such good relationships with these learners.”
Although it was not his original plan, Dr. Schutze’s career tied together the threads of his life. He grew up with scientists. His father was a chemical engineer with a PhD in organic chemistry. His mother had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. They met during World War II when both worked at the Exxon Refinery in Baytown, near Houston.
When Dr. Schutze was 6, the family moved to Spain for four years because of his father’s job. He learned to speak Spanish and became an experienced international traveler, skills that served him well in his teen years and in BIPAI.
A chance to help build BIPAI brought Dr. Schutze back to Houston in 2006. He trained Pediatric AIDS Corps physicians, who were placed in HIV/AIDS clinics in Africa, and other doctors around the globe. When he became Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Pediatrics in 2009, he worked with other leaders to establish a four-year Pediatric Global Health Residency that includes one year working abroad at an HIV/AIDS clinic.
At first, HIV and AIDS had occurred only in adults. Soon, however, the virus was transmitted from mothers to their children.
“In the mid-1990s, revolutionary medicines were developed to treat HIV,” Dr. Schutze said. “Our kids in the United States were put on these medicines and doing well. But in Africa, which was the hardest hit area, they had no public access to these medicines even by the mid-2000s.”
BIPAI grew to become one of the largest providers of pediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment in the world. It also expanded to treat other diseases affecting children and families in Europe, Africa and Latin America.
In his newest role as Vice Dean, Dr. Schutze works with Senior Dean Jennifer Christner, MD, on admissions, graduate medical education and continuing professional education.
He has served on the Pediatric Residency Recruitment Committee since 2009 and on the Medical School Admissions Committee since 2012. He has been recognized with a Fulbright and Jaworski LLP Faculty Excellence Award for Educational Leadership and two Norton, Rose, Fulbright Faculty Excellence Awards for Enduring Material and Educational Leadership. He was admitted into the Baylor College of Medicine Academy of Distinguished Educators in 2011. In 2022, Dr. Schutze received the Barbara and Corbin J Robertson Jr. Presidential Award for Excellence in Education, the highest Baylor College of Medicine Faculty educational award.
At a national level, Dr. Schutze has held multiple positions at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), including the editorial board of the Pediatrics Review and Educational Program (PREP) Self-Assessment Program and the founding editor of the PREP Infectious Diseases Self-Assessment Program. He was associate editor of Pediatrics, the official journal of the AAP, and served on the AAP Infectious Diseases Sub-board. He has also served on the Infectious Diseases Sub-board of the American Board of Pediatrics, developing the test questions for both the initial certification and maintenance of certification examinations.
Dr. Schutze was one of the editors for the 23rd edition of Rudolph’s Pediatrics Textbook, one of the most highly respected pediatrics textbooks ever published.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “I had parents who were supportive, a wife and a family who are supportive. I’ve had leaders who believed in me and helped me get where I am.”