Going forth to heal and to lead: U-M Medical School graduates 166 in the 166th class

STUDENT PROFILES: Jonathan Bender | Julie Blaszczak | Lesley Everett | Mohamad Issa | Jonathan Peterson | Yasmine White

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Today, 166 future health care leaders will enter the University of Michigan’s historic Hill Auditorium as students, and leave as physicians. 

And as the 166th graduating class of the U-M Medical School, they’ll enter the profession of medicine at a time of change and promise.

They’ll take their Hippocratic oath before a new school flag designed by one of their fellow graduates, with symbols and colors representing medicine, knowledge, learning, leadership and humanity.

And they’ll receive parting words from both the dean who led the school during most of their time as students and the dean who took the helm this past January.

Key facts about the Class of 2016:

• The 166 graduates are evenly split between men and women.
• 34 will graduate from one of the Paths of Excellence established by the school to give students enhanced experiences and training in areas such as global health, health policy, and ethics.
• 30 earned both a medical degree and a second graduate-level degree while at U-M, including several who completed the prestigious Medical Scientist Training Program with an M.D. and Ph.D. Others earned master’s degrees in public health, business, clinical research or other fields.
• One-third of the class took part in training and clinical care opportunities in other countries through the school’s Global Reach program and partnerships with institutions in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, India and beyond.
• As in previous years, the vast majority of these students conducted research in diverse fields during medical school, far higher than the national average.
• 45 percent of the graduates will soon start residency programs in internal medicine, pediatrics, medicine-pediatrics, obstetrics, and gynecology, or family medicine, fields that can lead to careers in primary care.

The students graduating today didn’t all enter the Medical School at the same time, but they leave a school whose future they helped shape.

This year’s graduates include students who helped advise on the development of a new curriculum now being phased in over the course of several years and students who helped the University redesign the Taubman Health Sciences Library building to make it a high-tech hub for medical and interprofessional health sciences education.

Both of those efforts were spearheaded by James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., who served as dean from 2007 to late 2015, and who will give the commencement address today.