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MSTP director is among nation's longest serving   Perry Halushka, M.D., Ph.D., has been director of MUSC’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) for a long time, in fact, longer than most of his colleagues in the country.   The College of Graduate Studies dean recently was recognized as being the third-longest serving director of any National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded MSTP by the Association of M.D./Ph.D.s, a committee of the Graduate, Research, Education and Training group, which is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The two other MSTP directors having served longest are Yale University’s James Jamieson, M.D., Ph.D.; and Nancy Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker Medical School.   MUSC’s M.D./Ph.D. program began in the early 1980s, and was a fledgling before Rosalie Crouch, Ph.D., and John Zemp, Ph.D., dean of the College of Graduate Studies, recruited Halushka, who was strictly a professor at the time, and put him in charge of the MSTP in 1987.   While the original M.D./Ph.D. programs preceded MUSC’s by about 20 years, many of them started with NIH money. MUSC supported its own program until 1999 when NIH awarded a grant after MUSC’s first application.   No longer fledgling, MUSC’s MSTP program includes 55 students whose scientific interests are as challenging and varied as the opportunities at MUSC.     Friday, Aug. 24, 2007 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.