HMS/HSDM Class Day
2005
The Doctor’s Advice: Talk to Strangers
Faculty Symposium
Profs Tell Tales of Molecular Medicine
HSPH Class Day
UN Official Sees Women’s Health Crisis in Africa
Alumni Day
How Doctors Speak to the Public
Class Symposium
For Class of ’80, Risk and Reward Mark a Productive 25 Years
DMS Symposium
Integration Key to Student Success in Life Sciences
Student Speakers
Students Recount Lessons Learned
Scenes From Alumni Week
Pictures from Commencement and Alumni Week activities
Student and Faculty Awards
Honors Given to Faculty and Students During Commencement
Growth Factor May Aid in Crohn’s Disease Treatment
Bench Science Advances Against Cancer
Dental School Dedicates New Building on Longwood
Faculty Health Survey Being Conducted
Awards Recognize Advancement of Women
BLAST Resource Available to HMS Faculty
The July Effect: How Hospitals Cope with Intern Turnover
STUDENT SPEAKERS
Students Recount Lessons Learned
Whether through jokes, time travel, or memories, all three of the student speakers at commencement tried to capture what their education had meant to them.
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Jared Kesselheim, then and now
Thomas Johnson, representing HSDM, remembered being asked, “Why Harvard?” when he was interviewed as an applicant. More than anything else, the interviewer explained, the significance of his experience would come from “the students sitting on your left and the students sitting on your right.” He said that his fellow students had provided a great amount of his inspiration and education and urged them to fulfill the potential they’d displayed in school by “going beyond individual achievement to push the limits of what is possible.”
Greg Feldman recounted the lessons he had learned at HMS, among them, “that we will struggle for years to attain a white coat that’s just as long as what the guy from Food Services receives immediately.” He ex-pressed gratitude for his family and the family of his fellow students. “You probably think that you’re here today to celebrate us,” he said, “but we think that we’re actually here to celebrate you—the family and faculty who got us to graduation.” He also thanked the students whose work in international health had inspired him and demonstrated that “our country has far, far more to offer the world than guns, pharmaceuticals, and arrogance.”
Jared Kesselheim (above) explored the history of the HMS graduate in his speech, “The Ghost of HMS Past,” in which he recounted entries from a fictional 200-year-old student diary. Wearing a tricorne and curled wig, he read off such passages as, “Now that I’m a Harvard man, perhaps women will finally like me,” to demonstrate the similarities between HMS students through the ages. Removing the hat, Kesselheim remarked that HMS has been producing passionate, caring physicians for over 200 years, and “now it’s our turn to make sure that remains true for the next 200 years as well.”
Earlier, Hawk Henries, a member of the Chabunagungamaug tribe of the Nipmuc Nation, brought the audience even further back in time with his flute song, “Thanksgiving.” His music commemorated the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Indian College at Harvard, established in 1655 to provide a joint education for American Indian and English students. The college’s first class started with five American Indian students, only one of whom graduated, the rest having succumbed to disease, murder, or outside financial pressure. Since then more than 800 American Indians have earned Harvard degrees.
This Class Day, 143 MDs and 34 DMDs were conferred to the Class of 2005. Seventy of the new MDs are male and 73 of them female. Underrepresented minorities made up about a quarter of the class at 36 students.