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Vital Signs

Class Day speakers commend a world view to DMS graduates

Graduating from DMS is better than winning the lottery, Dr. William Foege told the crowd at Class Day. "If you win the lottery," said Foege, senior medical advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, "you are still the same person the next day. . . . You just have money in the bank." The soon-to-be DMS graduates, however, had "won a lottery of high potential for a life of satisfaction and service—a bank account of knowledge and experience that will only grow," Foege explained. "You are now one of the people with the highest capacity for making the world what we want it to be."

Foege went on to challenge the new physicians and scientists to "love science . . . but don't worship it," to "think and act locally and globally," to "be a generalist and a specialist simultaneously," and to "close the gap" between haves and have-nots.

Students: The student speakers struck a similar note. "There is no bigger test for humanity than the global health crisis that we are currently facing," said Ph.D. candidate Niranjan Bose. "Each one of us has a unique contribution to make." And M.D. candidate Tobias Hays said, "I believe that even the smallest things have real significance. Instead of being overwhelmed by the immensity of the universe, we should . . . believe that we do matter and that our daily interactions are incredibly significant."

Pobably the most significant moment that day for the 21 Ph.D., 23 M.S., 29 M.P.H., and 69 M.D. students was when they heard their names called and received their velvet-lined hoods, which they would wear in the College-wide graduation ceremony the next day.

After the conferring of the hoods, a few student awards were presented: the Dean's Medal to M.D. candidate David Wartman, the John W. Strohbehn Medal to M.D.-Ph.D. candidate Jonathan Huntington, and the Good Physician Award to Kristen Thornton, chosen by her classmates as the graduate who best exempli- fies the personal and intangible qualities of a good physician. All the awards, including many presented the

Captured by the camera at Class Day were grinning M.D. grads like 1 Kristin Elias, 2 Benjamin Solomon and Kathleen Del Grosso; proud faculty and administrators like 3 Elmer Pfefferkorn, left, pictured with M.D. grad Jeffrey Barrett, and 4 Dean Stephen Spielberg, pictured with (behind him) associate deans Constance Brinckerhoff, David Nierenberg, and Gerald O'Connor; happy about-to-be-Ph.D.'s like 5 Niranjan Bose and 6 Laleh Talebian; and graduates of the master's of public health and evaluative clinical sciences programs like 7 Thaniyyah Ahmad. The already special day had particular meaning for two families—those of 8 Nikhil Thakur, in the center of the back row, who graduated from DMS exactly 100 years after his great-grandfather graduated from medical school, and 9 Geoffrey and Jaime Walford, in the center of the front row, first cousins and classmates whose graduation was cause for a family reunion.

previous day, are listed in the adjacent box.

Teachers: In addition, the graduates handed out some awards—the Basic Science Teaching Award to Dr. Martha McDaniel, the Clinical Science Teaching Award to Dr. Donald St. Germain, and the Thomas P. Almy Housestaff Teaching Award to Dr. Kari Rosenkranz.

Bringing Class Day to a close was the

booming voice of Professor John Rassias, Dartmouth's chair of French and Italian, as he chanted the Hippocratic Oath in Greek. Then Dr. Stephen Spielberg, DMS's dean, led the M.D. candidates in reciting the oath in English. "If I will be true to this, may prosperity and good repute be forever mine; the opposite if I shall prove myself forsworn," finished the dean and Dartmouth's newest physicians.

Jennifer Durgin


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