The Class of 2021, including Benjamin Adegbite, left, and Daniel Afonin, center, read an oath expressing their ideals.
In a symbolic celebration that marked the beginning of their medical education, 140 first-year students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai gathered on Monday, September 18, for the 20th Annual White Coat Ceremony. Family and friends cheered the Class of 2021 as the students walked to the stage of Stern Auditorium to be draped in white coats by faculty; they received their first stethoscopes just after the jubilant event.
“I know you have it in you to become the leaders of our profession and the world at large,” Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, told the class in his welcoming address. “You come to Mount Sinai from top undergraduate colleges and universities and have mean GPA and MCAT scores as high as any other students in the nation. But you are much more than that. It is not the academic accolades that convince me you have it in you to change the world. It is the fire in your eyes I see today that lets me know we are in capable hands.”
The incoming students—whose ages range from 21 to 36—represent diverse backgrounds and experiences. Nineteen percent identify as underrepresented minorities, and 50 percent are women. The class includes a Marine, a rabbi, a pastor, an ultramarathon runner, a sailor who has traveled one-third of the way around the world, and a student who grew up in Carver Houses, the public housing project across the street from The Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Charney said of that student, “It was a short walk across the street, but a long road to get here. She is an inspiration.”
Keynote speaker Paul R.G. Cunningham, MD
Valerie Parkas, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Recruitment and Admissions, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, administered an oath written by the students that expressed their ideals. The class pledged “to understand our patients’ diverse backgrounds and identities and treat them as partners in their care” and “to build upon the pillars of medicine through evidence-based practices and innovation.”
The keynote speaker was Paul R.G. Cunningham, MD, President of the North Carolina Medical Society, and Dean Emeritus of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Dr. Cunningham outlined his long career as a surgeon and educator, and he fondly recalled his residency at Mount Sinai, where he was mentored by Arthur H. Aufses Jr., MD, retired Chair of the Department of Surgery, whom he called his “professional father” and a “surgeon’s surgeon.” In their own professional journey, Dr. Cunningham advised the class to focus on outdoing themselves instead of merely competing with others, and to keep sight of their “why”—the vision that led them to study medicine.
Dr. Charney urged the Class of 2021 to “dream big.” And he posed challenges for the years ahead: translating the breakthroughs in DNA sequencing and precision medicine into clinical care; finding treatments for mental illness, substance abuse, and Alzheimer’s disease; and finding ways to treat, and even cure, the most common cancers.
“It is to your generation that we now turn, to guide us toward a new age of insight and discovery,” Dr. Charney said. “And it is our job, as your teachers, to guide you.”
Manjil Chatterji, MD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, and Medical Education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, bestowed a white coat on Courtney Connolly.
