Philip Holcomb

Philip Holcomb graduated from UNM with a BA in English in 1965. He joined the Peace Corps soon after, which relocated him to Malawai for 27 months. In 1970, Holcomb returned to the University of Colorado, Boulder to pursue and complete his PhD in English. While at UC Boulder, Holcomb met his wife, Kathleen Duggan, a fellow English scholar. Both he and his wife became professors at a small state university in San Angelo, Texas that was actively expanding at the time. They taught a variety of topics there for 30 years, but Holcomb cultivated classics. Beyond the classroom, he also became interested in medical ethics and the hospice movement, and was an active hospice volunteer serving on the Shannon Hospital Community Hospice of Texas, as well as on Plaza Hospital’s Ethics Committee.

Holcomb retired in 2001; and after four years in Fort Worth, relocated to San Antonio, where he currently designs and directs the ethics program for the Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Fellowship (the largest such program in the country) and serves on the University Hospital’s Ethics Committee. He holds the title of Adjunct Professor of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. It’s an engaging post-retirement arrangement for him, and he says he loves every minute of it.

Philip Holcomb was featured in the Alumni Spotlight in the first part of October, 2016.