College of Medicine Celebrates Class of 2015 at Honors Day

Brandishing freshly minted medical degrees, graduates of the College of Medicine are on the cusp of a bright and promising future. They have mastered a noble discipline, stretching to obtain an intellectual pinnacle that few people achieve.

"Given the strenuous academic demands and high performance indicators that are required for you to not only gain admission into our medical school but also to persist through those years and finish, I have absolutely no doubt that each of you has the intellect required to be a great doctor, a great physician-scientist or a great scientist,” said UC President Santa Ono.

But Ono, who delivered the keynote address at the college’s annual Honors Day ceremony, May 23, 2015, said education is about more than mastering a field. He challenged the 164 graduates to excel while not forgetting lessons in compassion.

"I profoundly believe that education is much more than mastering a field. It is much more than intellect. I believe that the education that each of our students receives should be not only of the mind but also of the heart and even of the soul,” said Ono.

He said the ceremony was the last chance he would have to remind graduates of the folly of over intellectualizing scenarios in the real world.

"My message to you is very simple today: to never forget that you have been educated at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine not just for your intellect, but also for the great gift of being able to give back with heart and passion to those that are less fortunate than you,” said Ono. "You will be increasingly called upon to do so and to do it with vigor and passion. Do it because you want to, not because you have to.”

Ono recalled a trip to Israel he took a year ago with a group of Cincinnati business leaders saying the memories will stay with him for a lifetime because of the lessons it offered. The group visited the Holocaust Memorial and were particularly moved by the Children’s Memorial, which honors 1.5 Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust.

"That memorial is a life-changing experience for anyone,” said Ono. "It’s located in a mirrored cavern, where there are many candles with a pinpoint light of thousands of candles that shine in the darkness seemingly into infinity. As you sit there and see those candle flickering you hear the names of 1.5 million who were not allowed to grow into adults, who were not allowed to grow into musicians and leaders and scientists and doctors, their lives cut short at the hands of the Nazis. It’s an incredible moment.”

Ono said he bent down and picked up a small stone to remind him of the experience. He wrote a name on the stone of a young Holocaust victim, 2-year-old Uziel Speigel.

"Seeing the memorial in person and recalling the horrific impact of what happened, I realized that some of the most influential leaders in Adolf Hitler’s inner circle were highly educated men who should have known better,” said Ono. 

"They had the finest education of the mind, but I say to you that they didn’t have an education of the heart and the soul.

"These were individuals, hate-filled people, who used their gift of education for the wrong ends. Some of them are doctors like Joseph Mengele, whose education did not seem to include an education of the heart,” said Ono. "That’s why it is so important to me that our students have not only an education of the mind, but also of the heart and soul because you will move into pivotal leadership positions where humanity will call upon you to do the right thing.”

Ono said College of Medicine graduates will be in demand with some estimates suggesting the nation will face a shortage of up to 90,000 physicians by 2025.

"If physicians are important today you will become increasing important as we approach 2025,” he said. "It is a responsibility you should think about moving forward this day onward.”

During Honors Day, the College also recognized winners of the 2015 Daniel Drake Medal, the college’s highest honor. It was established in 1985 and is given annually to living faculty or alumni for their outstanding and unique contributions to medical education, scholarship and research.

Drake Medal recipients for 2015 are:

Fred Finkelman, MD, professor of medicine and pediatrics and investigator and clinician at the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Uma Kotagal, MBBS, MSc, executive director of the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s and UC professor of pediatrics.

The 2015 Excellence in Public Health Award was presented to graduating 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 was 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.

The graduating class recognized several professors for their teaching excellence at their ceremony. David Fischer, MD, Department of Surgery, received the Golden Apple teaching award for the ninth consecutive year. Robert Neel, MD, and John Quinlan, MD, both of the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine, received Silver apple teaching awards.

Read the full list of student awards at Honors Day