About the Center
The Health Professions Advising Center (HPAC) helps students prepare to enter health professions. HPAC is many students’ first contact at UT Dallas and supports students throughout their training for and application to professional schools.
Advising Services
HPAC advisors teach classes and help students explore their interests, select classes and experiential learning, find summer experiences and internships and review and revise professional school applications.
Working with an HPAC advisor from freshmen year until you enter professional school dramatically increases your odds of admission to a professional health school and entering into a rewarding health career.
Former Directors
Dr. Karen de Olivares
Dr. Karen de Olivares served UT Dallas as associate professor and HPAC director from 2012 through 2019, after 12 years directing pre-health advising at Southern Methodist University. Her distinguished contributions to U.S. pre-health advising include editing the Pre-Health Advisors’ Reference Manual and New Advisors’ Reference Manual and serving the Texas Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (TAAHP) as secretary, treasurer and chair. Her publications include, “From Pigs Eyes’ to Mouse Ears,” “Unframed Photo: Some Wore Blue and Some Wore Gray,” “The Real Cost of Measuring Effectiveness,” and “A Participant-Observation Course in Applied Adolescent Development,” as well as numerous book reviews.
Dr. Scott Wright
Dr. Scott Wright served UT Dallas as associate dean and director of the Health Professions Advising Center from 2006 through 2011. His twenty years of higher education experience, including ten years as the director of admissions at UT Southwestern Medical School, shaped the personality of HPAC’s advising and services. During his time at UT Dallas, Dr. Wright held prestigious positions in many state and national professional organizations, was elected president of the National Association of Advisors of Health Professions (NAAHP), lead the implementation of the pre-health minor, Certificate in Biomedical Sciences, UT-PACT, and the state’s most rigorous Health Professions Evaluation Process.
Dr. Wright left UT Dallas to become Executive Director of the Texas Medical and Dental Application Service, overseeing all applications to Texas medical, dental and veterinary schools. There he oversaw the creation of Apply Magazine, the TMDSAS Podcast, the creation of many statewide advising resources and significant expansion and improvements to TMDSAS’s services. He provided free consultation to improve dozens of health professions advising offices.
Dr. Joseph Wood
Dr. Joseph G. Wood served as HPAC director and professor of neuroscience from 1996 until his retirement in 2007. Over his 45-year career, Dr. Wood shaped the founding of The University of Texas medical schools in San Antonio and Houston and served as chairman of the anatomy department at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine. He received many state and national honors during his tenure.
Since 2007, The University of Texas at Dallas has honored his legacy with the Joseph G. Wood Award and scholarship, presented each year to the University’s top medical or dental applicant.
