2016 Outstanding Alumnus Award Winner
As a young boy growing up in Jackson, Tenn., John Jennings probably never dreamed that one day he would be called a Renaissance man. He had plans to follow in his father’s footsteps and work on the railroad.
Before attending medical school, Dr. Jennings held jobs as a camp counselor, “rough neck” on a drilling rig, carpenter’s helper, lumber yard worker, clinical laboratory technician and member of a rock and roll band.
Jennings credits his elementary, junior high and high school teachers with encouraging him to pursue his interest in science. Ultimately, Dr. Jennings says, it is his brother-in-law, Edward G. Cutshaw, MD, a member of the 1958 University of Tennessee College of Medicine class, who inspired his decision to become a doctor, “He [Cutshaw] has practiced family medicine in a small town for over fifty years and for those many years, he has remained my example of what a doctor should be,” Dr. Jennings says.
Dr. Jennings received a bachelors of science in biology from Union University in 1967, and graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in June 1970. He interned at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1971 and completed residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 1974. Dr. Jennings served as medical officer for the United States Air Force Security Service until 1977 and settled into private practice in San Angelo, Texas for twelve years prior to entering academic medicine.
In 1989, Dr. Jennings took an academic position at the Wake Forest University Bowman Gray School of Medicine. It is in academic medicine that Dr. Jennings feels he found his true passion. Dr. Jennings had already delivered approximately 5,000 babies and had been in the operating room at least three days a week for eighteen years. Dr. Jennings believed he had the clinical experience to make himself the kind of teacher he most admired as a medical student.
“My academic career has provided a platform for me to do things I could not do from my private practice. I have now participated in the training of over 250 obstetrics and gynecology residents and innumerable medical students.”
During his tenure at Wake Forest University, Dr. Jennings served as Head of Gynecology and Program Director in Obstetrics and Gynecology. In 1993, he joined the University of Texas Medical Branch faculty where he served as professor and program director in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Jennings followed this appointment with a move to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas in 1999.
Currently serving as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Texas Tech, Dr. Jennings has held many titles, including Regional Dean from 2006-2012, within the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The greatest testament to the level of respect Dr. Jennings garners from his peers is his election as President of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2014. Additional honors Dr. Jennings has received include selection as the 2006-2007 Educator of the Year by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the ACOG Outstanding District Service Award and the ACOG Mentor of the Year Award.
Learning to read music is tops on Dr. Jennings’ bucket list, and there is no doubt this Renaissance man, and UTHSC College of Medicine Outstanding Alumnus Award winner will achieve this personal goal with the same dedication he has shown his students and colleagues over the years.
View Past Medicine Award Winners