Boonshoft School of Medicine welcomes the class of 2019 at convocation ceremony on July 26

During the Boonshoft School of Medicine’s July 26 ceremony, students will take their first oath of professional medical ethics and receive a white coat, a traditional symbol of the medical profession, personalized with his or her name and the medical school patch.

The Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine will welcome 111 students during a special ceremony on Sunday, July 26, formally marking the start of their medical education.

The annual Convocation and White Coat Ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. in the Schuster Performing Arts Center in downtown Dayton.

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 also will receive a white coat — a traditional symbol of the medical profession — personalized with his or her name and the medical school patch.

This is the third year that each student also will receive a stethoscope engraved with the words “Excel in Leaving a Mark,” thanks to the Jason Madachy Foundation, Neal Barney, M.D., ’83, alumni and friends. The foundation has given thousands of stethoscopes to medical students nationwide in honor of Jason Madachy, who died tragically in June 2007 just before he was about to start medical school at Marshall University.

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 more than 3,700 applicants, will begin orientation on Friday, July 24. Classes will soon follow.

The class of 2019 draws from a variety of undergraduate experiences. Educated at various universities across Ohio, including Case Western Reserve University, Miami University, Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati and Wright State University, members of the incoming class also hail from Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, University of Notre Dame and Vanderbilt University, among others.

From volunteering at homeless shelters to building houses for Habitat for Humanity, they have shown a strong commitment to community service both at home and abroad. Several have taken mission trips. Others have volunteered with prison outreach programs, Alzheimer’s patients, the Ronald McDonald House, children’s hospital playrooms and animal shelters. Some have volunteered as emergency medical technicians.

Fifty-one percent are women, while 49 percent are men. Sixty-six percent speak more than one language, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi and Spanish.

The speaker at this year’s Convocation and White Coat Ceremony is Evangeline Andarsio, M.D., a 1984 graduate of the Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine. She is board certified in family practice and obstetrics and gynecology. A clinical associate professor at the Boonshoft School of Medicine, she has been in private practice for more than 25 years as an obstetrician–gynecologist.

She is devoted to developing the spiritual connections in the medical profession and in the doctor-patient relationship. She has studied with Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., at the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness in Bolinas, California, and obtained certification of advanced studies in spirituality and spiritual direction at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership in Chicago. Andarsio is one of the directors of Remen’s Healer’s Art program for medical students at the Boonshoft School of Medicine. She initiated and chairs the annual Medicine-Spirituality Conference sponsored by the Boonshoft School of Medicine, Premier Health, Hospice of Dayton and others.