White Coat Ceremony Marks Beginning of Medical School Journey
Understandable nervousness mixed with well-deserved pride as members of the College of Medicine’s Class of 2013 took part in the annual White Coat Ceremony, held Aug. 15 in the UIC Forum. It was the 16th time the college has hosted the event, during which incoming first-year medical students receive their white coats as a symbol of their entry into medicine. The ceremony capped three days of student orientation held earlier in the week.
“I’m really excited and nervous,” said Lindsay Rutter, as she waited in the lobby before the ceremony. “They’ve been telling us all week how difficult the first two years will be.” A Pennsylvania State University graduate with a degree in bioengineering, Rutter is undertaking an especially formidable challenge—she’s enrolled in the college’s Medical Scientist Training Program, in which students earn both MD and PhD degrees. Fortunately, she’s already used to working in medical science at a very high level, having spent two years conducting neuroimaging research at the National Institutes of Health prior to enrolling in the College of Medicine.
The demands of medical school make a strong support system particularly important, and many of the students’ parents were on hand for the ceremony, along with extended family and friends. “We’re very proud,” said Cindy Wolf, mother of Matt Wolf ’09, of Erie, who earned his degree in biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and volunteered as an emergency medical technician for nearly three years. “He has worked very hard and has done a great job.”
“This event is a wonderful entry into medical school. It engages everyone, from parents to significant others, in the whole seriousness and joy of their undertaking,” said Patricia Fishman, MD ’80, Res ’84, clinical assistant professor of pathology at UIC and a member of the Medical Alumni Council.
Made up of members ranging from the classes of 1954 to 2008, the council buys the white coats for each year’s incoming M1 class. The council also includes Carrie Nieman, president of the Chicago Medical Student Council, who is in the fourth year of a combined MD/Master’s of Public Health program at UIC and was in the crowd at the event.
“We are thrilled that you are entering our institution,” Sarah Kilpatrick, MD, PhD, vice dean and Dr. Theresa S. Falcon-Cullinan Professor and head of obstetrics and gynecology, told the new students during the ceremony. “Every single day of your job, you can make a difference.”
John C. Mason Jr. ’53, MD ’55, Res ’59, chair of the Medical Alumni Council, welcomed the M1s on behalf of more than 19,000 alumni. “We are here to assist you as you enter the clinical phase of your education,” Mason said to the students, who then proceeded to the stage one by one to accept their white coats as applause and cheers resounded throughout the forum.
Each M1 student exchanged handshakes with the deans and distinguished alumni on stage, including Kilpatrick; Mason; master of ceremony Leslie J. Sandlow,’56, MD, senior associate dean for educational affairs and head of medical education; Jorge A. Girotti ’80, PhD ’90, associate dean for admissions and special curricular programs; Kathleen Kashima, PhD, senior associate dean of students; and David Mayer ’78, MD ’82, Res ’04, associate dean for curriculum.
As he received his coat, Ryan Fields received a big hug and a kiss from another alumni in the onstage group of dignitaries, Mable Blackwell, MS ’74, MD ’78, Res ’81, MPH ’86, a pediatrician and Medical Alumni Council member who also happens to be his mother. “I always thought Ryan would be a minister,” Blackwell said of her son, who completed a double major in music and biological sciences at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Instead, young Ryan eventually conquered his fear of blood. Blackwell joked that her ‘misdiagnosis’ of Ryan’s future “shows that mothers don’t know everything. But we still know most things.”
After receiving their white coats, the aspiring physicians helped each other put them on, a symbolic gesture of teamwork and togetherness. In the sea of alphabetically arranged students, Matt Wolf was in the back row, smiling widely while sighting his mom and dad amid the standing ovation behind him.
The new class followed the tradition of its college’s elders, reciting the 800-year-old Oath of Moses Maimonides, the rabbi, physician and philosopher from the Middle Ages. It included the following passage:
“Let everything that experience and scholarship have taught me be present in my mind and hinder it not in its tranquil work …May my teachers and my colleagues stand by me in this great task so that it may prosper.”
During the reception following the ceremony, digital cameras flashed as many students posed like rock stars. “This has been a long time coming,” said Elliot Dawson of Highland Park with a smile as he put his arms around family members, a next-door neighbor and his junior high humanities teacher. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the son of a nurse anesthetist, Dawson spent the past two years completing pre-med classes at Northwestern University. “This is so joyous and satisfying,” Dawson said. “It’s a very special day.”