First-Year College of Medicine Students Complete White Coat Ceremony

“It has been a long pursuit,’’ said a smiling first-year NEOMED College of Medicine student Chaucola Pleasant, gamely posing for photos with her sleepy two-year-old son on her hip. She migrated to the U.S. from Trinidad years ago with the goal of college and medical school. Life and love intervened, but here she was on Monday, Sept. 19, with a husband and three children to cheer her on, at the White Coat Ceremony for the College of Medicine class of 2020.

No doubt, each of the 160 students on Monday’s roster has a different story.

Getting into medical school has been the plan for James Dang of Akron ever since middle school. “Now is the hard part: finishing it!’’ he said with big grin.

Spirits were high and in some cases, irrepressible, at the ceremony in which first-year medicine (M1) students take their oath and are welcomed to the medical fold. Since beginning at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 1989, the White Coat ceremony has caught on to become a tradition at schools throughout the nation. Timothy Culver, an associate professor of voice at Kent State University, got Monday’s event off to a regal start with his commanding performance of the National Anthem.

Dressed up for the occasion, the first-year students filed demurely into the NEW Center Ballroom with their new white coats folded neatly over their arms. Yes, the audience was supposed to hold its applause during the culminating moments when the students trooped onstage, one at a time, to be announced by name and helped into their white coat. But one enthusiastic audience member in the back just couldn’t help but yell, ‘’Get that white coat!’’ and moments later another person cheered, “That’s my twin!’’

Earlier, in their respective remarks, Jay A. Gershen, D.D.S., Ph.D., president of NEOMED, welcomed the students and reminded them of how fast the next four years will go. Jeffrey Susman, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine, encouraged the students to remember to retain their sense of humor and perspective, and to behave now as the physicians they are learning to become.

In his keynote address, Jeffrey Wenstrup, Ph.D., professor and chair of anatomy and neurobiology at NEOMED, spoke of the exciting discoveries made while he was in graduate school 40 years ago: the advent of serotonin research, which led to the widespread use of Prozac for managing depression; and the first appearances of the mysterious and then-unknown disease later named AIDS.

As a student, you may sometimes be impatient with all of the basic science you have to learn in the first two years of medical school, Dr. Wenstrup told the M1s. You may wonder how it applies to actually treating patients. But store up all of that information as a foundation. Take all the knowledge you can from discoveries that will help you to provide the best patient care.

Before the ceremony, Rhonda Cooney said that her daughter Danielle Cooney, M1, had always wanted to be a doctor. “She had a lot of eye problems and she always said ‘Mom, I’m going to grow up and help people,’’’ said Rhonda, whose family lives right around the corner from NEOMED. Neither Rhonda nor her husband are college graduates, so if this mom couldn’t stop smiling on Monday, she – and all the other proud family and friends in the Ballroom that day—had good reason to beam.