Convocation ceremony marks start of medical education for class of 2022

During the Boonshoft School of Medicine’s Convocation and White Coat Ceremony on July 8, entering students will take an oath of professional medical ethics and receive a white coat personalized with his or her name and the medical school patch.

The Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine will welcome 120 students during a special ceremony on Sunday, July 8, formally marking the start of their medical education. The annual Convocation and White Coat Ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. at the Schuster Center, 1 West Second Street, Dayton, OH 45402.

During the ceremony, students will take their first oath of professional medical ethics, concluding with the words, “I commit myself to a lifelong journey of learning how to cure, relieve and comfort with humility and compassion.” Each student will receive a white coat — a traditional symbol of the medical profession, personalized with her or his name and the medical school patch. Students also will receive a stethoscope.

The Convocation and White Coat Ceremony represents an important milestone in each student’s journey to enter the medical profession. It also marks the first time these students will gather as a class and meet the people who will share, during the next four or more years, what may be some of the most memorable and intense experiences of their lives.

The students, who were carefully selected from a group of 5,220 applicants, will begin orientation on Friday, July 6. Classes begin on Monday, July 16.

The class of 2022 draws from a variety of undergraduate experiences. Educated at various universities across Ohio, including Case Western Reserve University, Miami University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, University of Cincinnati, University of Dayton and Wright State University, among others, members of the class also hail from Georgetown University, Howard University, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University, among others.

In addition to Ohio, the class of 2022 comes from as far away as Arizona, California, Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Fifty-five percent of the students are from Ohio, while 45 percent are from out of state.

The members of the class of 2022 have shown a strong commitment to community service. They have volunteered in hospitals and medical centers in addition to serving on medical service trips to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and the Philippines.

Fifty-seven percent are women, while 43 percent are men. Eighteen percent are from groups underrepresented in medicine.

Sixty-five percent of the members of the class of 2022 speak several languages, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Nepali, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese, among others.

The speaker at this year’s Convocation and White Coat Ceremony is Marcus Washington, M.D., a 1999 graduate of the Wright State University School of Medicine. After graduating from medical school, Washington completed a family medicine residency at the Indiana University/Methodist Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program, where he served as the second African-American chief resident in the program’s history.

Over the past 16 years, Washington has worked in a variety of rural and urban settings in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio. Currently, he is the lead physician at Premier Health Family Medicine in Mason, Ohio.

He is a board-certified family physician and a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Physicians. In addition to patient care, he is a mentor to medical students. In 2017, Washington returned to the Boonshoft School of Medicine as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine. Outside of his medical practice, he serves in leadership roles with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Cincinnati chapter of the National Medical Association.

Comments are closed.