For Immediate Release: August 29, 2001
Reprinted from the 2001 DMS Digest
Contact: DMS Communications (603) 650-1492
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Celebration and Ceremony

Photos by John Douglas/ Flying Squirrel

Dean John C. Baldwin, MD with keynote speaker and bestselling author and mind/body health pioneer Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Smiling faces under a glorious blue sky marked Dartmouth Medical School's 2001 class day festivities (June 9) that honored newly minted physicians and researchers embarking on the next stage of their professions.

Opening the ceremonies, Dean John C. Baldwin, MD, congratulated students and their guests. Using a cardiac analogy, he said the student body are the blood, passing through the lungs and being oxygenated, then passing out through the aorta. While DMS is sorry to lose so many people each year,"this is, after all, living organism," he continued, with a life cycle. At its heart are the faculty," one of the more permanent aspects of our institution," who deserve our profound gratitude.

Expanding on the heart theme, bestselling author and mind/body health pioneer, Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, addressed,"Living a Life of Service."What she discovered only after medical school, she told the audience, was,"it is possible be a physician and live from the heart." She discussed the power and humanity that come from the heart. "The heart is the organ of vision-- a way of seeing," that enhances meaning.And meaning, she continued," has the power to transform our experience of work."

Reaching into her experience, she recalled how she learned to open her heart and mind to see familiar things in new ways. She came to see that "fixing and helping people offers satisfaction," while "service offers gratitude for the opportunity to do this work that lasts a lifetime." The potential for a meaningful life and enduring satisfaction exists. "May your work enable you to grow in wisdom."

Dean John C. Baldwin, MD with keynote speaker and bestselling author and mind/body health pioneer Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Also speaking were medical student Rachel Solotaroff and MD/PhD student Adam Lee Hersh, recipient of doctorate in evaluative clinical sciences. Soltaroff took a lighthearted, yet serious look at the "essence of doctorness" and the evolution of her classmates at DMS into physicians. Hersh, who is now a third year medical student, noted that it was a good time to be in medicine and science and at DMS. One of the "great scientific lessons" his mentors have imparted is,"We must be willing to abandon our assumptions... and let go of the lessons ...learned when the data from good studies tell us something different."

Students, headed by class marshals Pamela Kunz, John Mengshol and Jeanette Conner, marched to the strains of bagpipes played by DMS alumni James Feeney and Travis Metheney. The academic procession followed, led by Baldwin and Remen and faculty marshal Harold Friedman, MD, associate professor of medicine, who is retiring.

The celebration recognized 132 DMS students who were among the 1,571 awarded degrees at Dartmouth College's commencement ceremonies (June 10): 64 received an MD, 20 received a PhD in the life sciences, and 48 received degrees in the evaluative clinical sciences, three a PhD, and 45 a masters.

The new Dartmouth Medical School physicians will continue their training in generalist and specialty areas across the nation; 20 will remain in New England, including four at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Graduate students will take their place in academia or in private and public sector positions around the country.

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