The students trying to save a life amid a national organ donation shortage

When Jeff Hanson decided to become a professor nearly 20 years ago, he made a vow: If he was going to be a teacher, he was going to be the favorite — the one everybody remembered. 

Turns out, it was an easy oath for the Texas Tech University mechanical engineering professor to follow through on. Hanson has one of the highest teaching evaluations in the engineering college and has received the most influential professor award multiple times. His days are long, he said, because he regularly writes letters of recommendation, keeps up with current and former students and reviews concepts a student doesn’t understand.

This past Thanksgiving, he and his wife hosted more than 180 students at their house in Lubbock, Texas, for Friendsgiving — an annual tradition for almost 20 years. He regularly has students over for dinner and game nights. He wants them to know him as a regular person and not just Dr. Hanson.

Students joke that Hanson’s office is like the DMV — so busy that you should take a number as everyone jostles for a spot. 

A legacy built in the classroom

Hanson, 58, has spent his entire adult life managing an autoimmune disease. In the past 18 months, the symptoms have worsened, impeding his ability to live a normal life. 

Now, after years of meeting each student’s request for help, Hanson is reversing roles. In desperate need of a kidney transplant, his students are stepping up to help him. So far, more than 100 people — mostly current and former students — have signed up to be a potential donor. 

“It teaches you that the way you live your life, the way you act, the way that you’re around people, the way you treat people and how as a teacher, the way I pour into my students wholly — it all matters,” he said.

Dr. James Cooper, a nephrologist at UCHealth, said kidney disease is extremely prevalent across the country and globe and that those with progressive disease have two options: dialysis or a transplant.

Dialysis, which mimics a kidney’s function, requires patients to connect to a machine for several hours a time, multiple times a week to properly clean and filter their blood. Transplants can be logistically easier, and also improve life expectancy, Cooper told Straight Arrow News. 

The hard part, Cooper said, is finding a donor.

Navigating a national organ shortage

More than 103,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list, and every day, 13 people die waiting for an organ transplant, according to Donate Life America. The number of people on the list is rising faster than the number of available organs: Another person is added to the waiting list every eight minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The vast majority of people on the transplant list — roughly 90,000 — are waiting for a kidney. Cooper said among the reasons that kidney disease is so prevalent in the United States is because of its aging population, which often comes with an uptick in diabetes diagnoses.

Unlike heart and lung transplants, kidneys can be given by live donors; according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, about 7,200 people donated a kidney in 2025. Folks waiting for a kidney, like Hanson, are much more likely to find a donor through their network than via strangers: In a 20-year study, researchers found an average of 217 live kidney donations were facilitated between strangers each year. 

According to the odds, finding a donor means a lot of work for a recipient. Adding to the challenge: Organ donation rates dropped in 2025 for the first time in more than a decade, due to public mistrust in the nation’s organ transplant system.

In addition to teaching his regular courses, Hanson runs a popular YouTube channel — he calls it his “empire” — with about 300,000 subscribers, who have also stepped up to help him.

The search for a living donor

About 35 years ago, Hanson underwent a physical before starting a job at Sears, installing car tires. During that appointment, doctors identified that something wasn’t quite right.

Hanson was poked and prodded. Then he was diagnosed: IGA nephropathy, an autoimmune disease that causes a germ-fighting protein called immunoglobulin A to build up in the kidneys. Over time, the inflammation from the disease can make it harder for the kidneys to filter waste from the blood.

For most of his life, Hanson has been able to manage the disease by carefully controlling his blood pressure and muscling through bad headaches. But about a year-and-a-half-ago, his symptoms worsened.

His exhaustion was persistent. He had a non-stop metal taste in his mouth. His feet were numb and it was difficult to walk. 

Hanson’s doctors advised him to attempt a transplant first rather than beginning dialysis.

Most people who are on the organ transplant list wait an average of five to seven years. Hanson said he wasn’t willing to wait that long. With the help of his sister, he activated his network. 

Jennifer Cox was at work when she saw the post about Hanson needing a kidney. She immediately stopped her task for Boeing where she is an airplane engineer, and signed up to be a potential donor. 

Cox, 40, credits Hanson for her career. He pushed her to dream big when she didn’t believe in herself. He also gave her a sense of family and community when she needed it the most.

As a nontraditional college student at 28, Cox stayed on campus during the week and then commuted five hours to Fort Worth on the weekends to be with her husband and twin daughters. Cox quickly became a member of the Hanson family, having dinner at their house during the week and helping his kids with homework.

“He’s just a genuine light of a person and he is there for everyone,” she said. “They joke that they have two biological children, but they have 20,000 adopted children any given day of the week or weekend.” 

So, when she saw the call out for a kidney, Cox, who now lives outside Seattle, knew what to do. After all, she said, Hanson was made to touch lives and “needed to be protected at all costs.”

A community of ‘angels’ steps forward

Determining whether a donor is a good candidate is a slow process.

Cooper said it is a “360-degree, thorough head-to-toe evaluation of someone’s physical, mental and social health,” all to ensure the donor is at minimal risk for short- or long-term health consequences.

After about two months of tests, Cox was deemed an official match. It would be up to the transplant committee to make the final decision.

Then, on Jan. 9, doctors detected an imperfection with Cox’s kidney — right as they were scheduling a surgery date. The transplant committee would not greenlight the surgery . 

“It was kind of a punch in the gut,” said Hanson. “I was very depressed and I felt defeated and felt like this maybe just wasn’t going to happen.”

Except, then, the unexpected happened. 

Hanson’s donor list ballooned from about 50 people to more than 100. It’s the longest list of potential donors his transplant coordinator has ever seen, Hanson said. 

“It’s very humbling,” he said. “I can’t believe that this many people care about me like they do.”

Cooper, the nephrologist, said he would be surprised if Hanson doesn’t have a match somewhere in his list.

Not everyone can match with him for a kidney. Obviously. But Hanson said others are stepping up in so many other ways. 

If and when Hanson finds a kidney match, he and his wife will need to stay near a Fort Worth hospital, five hours from Lubbock, for at least a month. The parents of a student have refused to take no for an answer, he said, and will host the Hansons at their home a few blocks from the hospital. 

“I’ve never asked anybody for help before with anything,” Hanson said. “My angels are working overtime because at every turn, every need is being met.”

While kidneys can have a higher rate of rejection than other organs, Cooper said the procedure tends to be an easier recovery than the heart or lungs. Patients usually stay about three days in the hospital compared to several weeks, he said.

For now, Hanson is trying to stay patient. 

To ensure the kidney is a perfect match, the donor undergoes extensive blood tests, scans, physical and psychological assessments. It’s a time-consuming process and one that can come with limited transparency unless the donor communicates directly with Hanson. 

Hanson is positive he will receive a transplant. It’s just a matter of when.

Until then, he is staying focused on his teaching and looking forward to getting back to fixing up his butter yellow Honda N600 — the first project he plans to tackle post-transplant. 

Plus, he added: “I got a lot more engineers that I have to train, so I’ve got to get better.”

Among those engineers?

Cox’s now 17-year-old twin daughters who both want to attend Texas Tech because of Hanson and the community he has built.

“There is no one else I would trust my girls with more,” Cox said.

The post The students trying to save a life amid a national organ donation shortage appeared first on Straight Arrow News.

Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief