Skip to main content

Texas Physician Delivers Mississippi College Medical & Dental Alumni Association Lecture


Dr. Alice Gong

Mississippi College provided the quality education that Dr. Alice Gong needed to prepare her for a stellar medical career.

Extraordinary chemistry professors like Jerry Cannon and John Legg made learning a joy for the bright undergraduate from Greenwood, Mississippi. Alice spent countless hours in labs and reading her textbooks at the Hederman Science Building before earning her MC bachelor’s degree in chemistry Magna Cum Laude in 1976.

A professor of pediatrics since 2006 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dr. Gone returned to her alma mater to deliver a lecture on an important topic. Her address at Swor Auditorium in late March focused on the benefits of breastfeeding for infants to advance their health.

At the MC Medical & Dental Alumni Association-sponsored lecture, hundreds of students looked on with their professors. In a few years, many of the young men and women in the audience will emulate the successes of medical leaders like Dr. Gong.

At the 3,300-student University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dr. Gong is a well-known authority on breastfeeding and other topics related to pediatrics.

“I am passionate about breastfeeding as the best form of nutrition for all our babies, but I was overwhelmed by the science of lactation that has accumulated in the past decade,” she said following her talk.

“I also became aware of all the barriers that exist as to why mothers give up their dream and plans to breastfeed their babies.”

Dr. Gong even tried to get her own hospital to be “baby friendly,” but instead discovered what was “happening to undermine our mothers and their plans to breastfeed their newborns.”

The Texas professor didn’t just do the research.

The Rita and William Head Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Developmental Neonatology in the Department of Pediatrics in San Antonio, Dr. Gong became part of a cause.

“I worked on a lot of things to help us preserve, promote and protect breastfeeding,” the MC graduate said.

“I think it is important that as a society that we continue to do this. We have become a society where artificial feeding of babies have become the norm and most people think that giving a bottle to a baby is what is necessary and attack women who want to breastfeed their baby.”

Dr. Gong’s presentation was well-received on the Clinton campus.

The former Delta resident was asked what led her to select Mississippi College as her undergraduate school. Her high school chemistry, advanced biology and physics teacher, Marvin Elliott, introduced her to the Baptist-affiliated university. Elliott was a former MC instructor.

“MC provided me with something that I want and need – a great record in getting students to medical school and a small, friendly campus,” she said.

What was true for Alice Gong in the 1970s remains the case today. Opened in 2013, MC’s 22,000-square-foot medical sciences building along College Street contains a cadaver lab, histology lab, first-rate research facilities and classrooms. MC exceeds state and national averages when it comes to the percentage of its students going to medical school. The university placed 116 students into medical or dental schools in Fall 2014.

Dr. Gong is a 1980 graduate of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson. She did her residency in pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. A frequent presenter at conferences in states like Texas, Louisiana, Arizona and Mexico, she’s won numerous awards during her career. In 2013, Dr. Gong received the Texas Pediatric Society Executive Board Award.