As an intern, Sherry C. Huang, M.D., discovered a pathway to become one of the world’s leading genetic experts on inherited colon cancer syndromes. Her determination to help others was driven by painful and personal experience.

“I diagnosed my father with colon cancer when he was in his mid-50s,” said Dr. Huang, who joined UT Southwestern as Vice Provost and Senior Associate Dean for Education on Feb. 1. “It cannot get any more personal than having to diagnose your own parent. It’s why I went into early-risk colon cancer research.”

After concentrating on cancer research and patient care for more than two decades, Dr. Huang will now shift her emphasis to education leadership, an area she had expanded into during her tenure at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), then Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS), now known as Rutgers Health.

At Rutgers, she served as Vice Chancellor for Graduate Medical Education and Enterprise Wide Designated Institutional Official (DIO) and also as Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Gastroenterology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. As Vice Chancellor and DIO, Dr. Huang provided executive leadership and management of an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Sponsoring Institution that spanned two medical schools, 13 hospitals, and 125 ACGME residency and fellowship programs with oversight of 1,700 trainees encompassing 70% of GME learners in the state of New Jersey.

“Dr. Huang’s proven strategic planning and leadership record, her deep understanding of the continuum of instruction, and her demonstrated skills enabling collaborations across distinct institutional entities will help chart the next era of education at UT Southwestern,” said W. P. Andrew Lee, M.D., Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of UT Southwestern Medical School.

Among her accomplishments, Dr. Huang successfully consolidated all GME programs at RBHS under one Sponsoring Institution while honoring the distinct traits of the diverse campuses and hospital systems. She guided the implementation of innovative curricula and training paradigms in the clinical learning environment to ensure alignment with institutional missions and priorities. Dr. Huang also designed health education programs and interprofessional training models to foster collaborative teaching, which increased opportunities to train health care learners in a team modeled approach to mitigate health care workforce shortages while improving health access and equity.

In her new role at UT Southwestern, Dr. Huang succeeds Charles Ginsburg, M.D., who is retiring after 50 years of dedicated service to UTSW including, since 2016, as Vice Provost and Senior Associate Dean for Education. Dr. Huang said her primary responsibility will be to further enhance the academic excellence that has positioned UT Southwestern nationally as a leading institution for medical education.

“I was incredibly impressed by the potent and available opportunities here for real change,” said Dr. Huang, who will also be Professor of Pediatrics at UTSW. “UT Southwestern represented the ‘be-all’ of learning institutions for promoting new and better ways to teach medicine and redefine health equity and access.”

The granddaughter of physicians, Dr. Huang has for more than two decades led research funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Gastroenterological Association focused on tumorigenesis in early-onset colon cancer. Her laboratory career at UCSD and most recently at RBHS has included working to identify families at risk and creating a regional registry for polyposis syndromes. Dr. Huang’s latest research employed computational models to predict genetically predisposed colon cancer patients who can benefit from targeted prevention.

“I’ve had the privilege of helping families – specifically young children – with rare diseases related to early-risk colon cancer syndromes. Because of the hereditary nature of these syndromes, over time, my young patients have become parents themselves, and I have been humbled to also manage their children medically,” Dr. Huang said.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Huang earned her medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1994. She completed residency training in pediatrics at UCSD, followed by a fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition, and postdoctoral research training with a focus on cancer genetics. Dr. Huang then joined the faculty of UCSD, pursuing a career as a physician-scientist while promoting medical education in progressive leadership roles at UCSD and then Rutgers.

“I always wanted to follow in my grandparents’ footsteps,” Dr. Huang said. “I recall visiting them as a little girl and being so fascinated. There was no way for me ‘to escape’ but to become a physician myself.”

As for her latest career move, she said the decision to join UTSW was easy and related to her finding a genuine collaborative and innovative spirit from the people she met in the academic community.

“What is most exciting for me about UT Southwestern is how well positioned it is to lead the state and our nation in defining new educational paradigms to train tomorrow’s leaders,” Dr. Huang said.