For Release: August 12, 2009
Contact: dms.communications@dartmouth.edu, 603-650-1492
In the with New: First-year Dartmouth Medical Students Begin
Senior Advising Dean Joseph
O'Donnell greets students
Hanover, N.H.—Dartmouth Medical School ushered in a new academic year when 84 first-year medical students, broadly educated and bringing a diversity of experience in work and service from around the country and world, arrived for orientation.
Ranging in age from 45 to 21, the class of 2013 converged August 10 for the medical school's 213th opening day. It began with welcomes from another newcomer to the Dartmouth community—Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim—as well as DMS Dean William Green and others.
"With scientific progress being so rapid and the promise so great, we still face problems with our health care system, disenfranchisement of so many of our citizens, and funding quandaries, " Green told the class in his welcome letter. "Modern medicine spans basic science, the interactive skills of being a physician to individual patients, health care delivery, and prevention in the context of whole populations.... The model of collaboration at DMS may in fact be part of the solution."
The newest future DMS doctors come well prepared for their rigorous, yet rewarding chosen profession, according to Admissions Director Andy Welch, who presented the entering class.
Members—some already with graduate degrees—include published scientific authors; veterans of the military service, Peace Corps and Americorps; sports team captains, and performers.
"Today you join a remarkable community....a community that expects and nurtures idealism, compassion and service; one that despite all we have in common, rejoices in our differences." said Welch. "Every one of you is here because you have the promise to become a great doctor, to enrich DMS and your classmates while you are here and to carry on the medical school's two-century tradition of excellence during your career."
A array of information and team building activities continue throughout the week to help students get acquainted with Dartmouth academic and community life before they start classes August 17. Graduate students arrive in September.
Highlights of the 2009 entering medical class:
- 5,294 applications
- 84 students, including 3 MD-PhD
- 47 women, 37 men
- 56 undergraduate institutions; 11 Dartmouth College students
- 27 states, including 8 students from California
- 22 countries of birth, including citizens of Canada, Nigeria, Korea, the Philippines and Romania.
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