College of Medicine Graduates Class of 2015 Saturday, May 23

CINCINNATI—The University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine will award medical degrees to 164 graduates at the 2015 Honors Day ceremony, starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 23, at Aronoff Center for the Arts in downtown Cincinnati.

UC President Santa Ono, PhD, will deliver this year’s address, titled "Education of the Heart and Mind.” The university’s 28th president, Ono holds appointments as professor of pediatrics in the College of Medicine and professor of biology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.

Ono’s principal research interests focus on the immune system and eye disease and he maintains an active research lab. He earned his PhD from McGill University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.

Members of the Class of 2015 will be entering residency programs in 27 states and the District of Columbia, with 34 percent of the class staying in Ohio for their primary hospital residencies. Of those, 18 students will complete all or a portion of their residency at UC Health University of Cincinnati Medical Center and five will complete pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

The most popular residencies for this year’s graduates are internal medicine with 22 matched students, pediatrics (14) and emergency medicine (13). At the start of the ceremony graduates will recite the class oath they wrote upon entering medical school. Once their hooding is complete, graduating students will recite the Hippocratic Oath.

During the ceremony the 2015 Excellence in Public Health Award will be presented to fourth-year medical student Heather Marlene Hughes. The award is given to a student who develops or implements programs that help educate patients about a specific disease or to promote healthy lifestyle choices.

The Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award will be presented to Philip Diller, MD, PhD, Fred Lazarus Jr. Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine, and fourth-year medical student Leslie Applegate.  The Tow award recognizes individuals who emphasize humanism in the delivery of care to patients and their families.

Three College of Medicine faculty will also receive awards for outstanding teaching and mentorship.  David Fischer, MD, Department of Surgery, will receive the Golden Apple Award, while Robert Neel, MD, and John Quinlan, MD, both of the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine, will receive Silver Apple Awards.

For more than four decades, medical students have upheld the tradition of giving "apples” to their favorite teachers at their commencement ceremony. The Gold and Silver Apple Awards program was established in 1968 by the Pi Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The idea was to give the students the chance to recognize professors who had the most impact on their medical career—and life path—by serving as excellent instructors and mentors.

For more about Honors Day.