From Dekaney to HBCU to Ivy League Medical School, Spring ISD Alum Pursues a Path of Excellence
Dekaney High School Class of 2018 graduate Royce Hooks knows a thing or two about hard work.
Hooks graduated at the top of his Dekaney class as valedictorian before heading off to Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, one of the nation’s top-ranked HBCUs. After graduating from Xavier in just three-and-a-half years, Hooks embarked on his most ambitious adventure yet, as a newly minted medical student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine – one of just a handful of Ivy League medical schools in the U.S. – where Hooks recently completed his first year of studies.
“It’s a lot of time management, a lot of just getting adjusted to the schedule and changing your schedule up around medical school,” said Hooks, who along with his acceptance at UPenn received a full-tuition scholarship offer based on his experience and academic track record. “In college I would stay up all night, but in medical school I can’t do that anymore, I’ve got to go to sleep at a decent time now! It’s a nice adjustment.”
Having wrapped up his undergraduate coursework a semester early, Hooks spent the time between Xavier and UPenn in an extended clinical laboratory internship, learning more about what goes on behind the scenes in medicine and medical diagnostics. Last summer, he relocated to Philadelphia where he took part in the Perelman school’s “white coat ceremony,” a much-anticipated rite of passage for incoming medical school students.
“It’s a ceremony that kind of shows us that we worked hard, we’re finally here, we’re finally on the road to be a doctor,” Hooks said. “It was a very proud moment, finally being able to put on the white coat, and it was very emotional, because you work so hard to reach that point.”
For Hooks, that hard work had begun years earlier, when he was still on his K-12 journey as a student in Spring ISD.
Although Hooks graduated from Dekaney as his campus of record, he spent the majority of his high school years in the medical tower at Spring ISD’s Carl Wunsche Sr. High School, where he was enrolled in the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) pathway.
“The medical tower was great,” Hooks said. “They had a lot of options for us and really exposed us to a lot of things. I did the EMT pathway, so I got my EMT license right before I graduated from high school. I used it throughout college, and that just further emphasized my love for the medical field.”
Through his experience training for and later volunteering as an EMT in New Orleans during college, Hooks discovered two of his favorite aspects of working in medicine – helping people and tackling complex situations under pressure.
“I loved talking to people and helping people, and doing what I can to help ease whatever they’re going through,” Hooks said. “That was really what I loved, and also the problem-solving aspect of it, you know, figuring out what’s wrong. I really enjoyed that aspect of medicine.”
The district’s extensive Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings give students like Hooks a chance to explore different interests and areas of study before committing to a choice, and before having to make big decisions about where to go to college and what to major in.
“That was big for me, just having all those available options to choose from throughout school,” Hooks said. “The CTE classes I took at Wunsche, Dekaney and Roberson, they were all great, and even before I really knew I wanted to go into medicine, I took different classes in things like engineering, or I took an intro to cooking class for a little bit, and stuff like that really got me exposed to different fields. It made me realize what I like and what I don’t like.”
By the time he was deciding on a college, Hooks knew he wanted to pursue medicine. He also knew that, if possible, he would like to attend one of the country’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where he hoped to find just the right balance of acceptance, encouragement, like-minded fellow students, and the resources he would need to achieve his goals.
“I definitely did want to go to an HBCU,” Hooks said. “I knew that in high school, just because I wanted to be in an area where I felt supported, and I knew I would be around a lot of people who look like me who also wanted to pursue a lot of big things.”
After weighing his options, Hooks said that Xavier was a natural fit, and not too far away from home for his parents to give their approval as their youngest son got ready to graduate and move away from home.
“I chose Xavier specifically because of their reputation for sending so many African American students to medical school,” Hooks said. “Xavier has a long track record for that.”
Retina Hooks – a longtime Spring ISD educator working most recently as a special education teacher at Anderson Elementary School – has now watched her son’s path lead from Houston to New Orleans to far-from-home Philadelphia. Through it all she said she’s been a proud mom, happy to see her son making the most of every opportunity.
“He started with Spring ISD, from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade, so he is definitely a Spring ISD product, and I’m really proud of him,” Hooks said.
Royce is the third of Hooks’ three sons to graduate from the district. She said each of them had used what they learned in Spring ISD to get to where they wanted to go, including her youngest.
“People say to me, ‘You did a good job at raising your child,’” Hooks said. “I say it was everyone. It was his teachers, the administrators, it was Spring ISD – and of course his Bible school teachers! It was all of them put together that I would say did the job. They helped me do the job, because I couldn’t have done it by myself.”
Source: Spring ISD
