- College of Medicine Student Affairs Students
Vasiliki Beleri wiped tears from her eyes moments after graduating as a UCF Physician Knight. Nearby stood her father, who had once lost three fingertips while working at the family’s Central Florida restaurant. Beleri was 10 when the accident happened – she sterilized and rebandaged his wounds every night when he returned home from work. “I was so excited to play doctor,” she said. “Even as a child I knew medicine was my calling.”
Beleri was one of 119 UCF College of Medicine graduates who earned their M.D. degrees on Friday. She will now go onto the University of Texas to become a family medicine resident, a specialty she chose so she can care for entire generations — from newborns to seniors. As she gathered with her family outside Addition Financial Arena, she hugged her grandmother, Vasillo. The family matriarch was asked how it felt to have a granddaughter as a doctor. Beleri translated the question into Greek. The grandmother looked to the heavens, covered her heart with her hands, and said, “I feel full.”
With Friday’s commencement, UCF’s young medical school has graduated 1,312 physicians. This year’s class had a 100 percent residency placement rate and will go onto residencies across Florida and the nation in specialties that include surgery, psychiatry, pediatrics, OB-GYN, radiology and primary care.
Dr. Deborah German, vice president for health affairs and dean, reminded graduates they had helped to create the College of Medicine’s legacy. “Today you become alumni of an innovative medical school committed to improving health for all,” she said. “Our medical school is part of a university founded in 1963 to educate the talent to support our nation’s space program and the ambitious goal to land humans on the moon – a challenge that seemed impossible at the time. We make the impossible the inevitable. At UCF we want each and every one of you to boldly invent the future.”
The Class of 2025 graduates came to UCF’s medical school with dreams often based on life experiences. Some had overcome health challenges of their own and saw the important role doctors had played in their recovery. Some were inspired by parents who are beloved physicians to their patients. Others had volunteered and became passionate about serving their community.
Parag Vyas is Beleri’s fiancé – the two met during study sessions in their first year of medical school. He grew up in Orlando, just minutes from the UCF campus. In the sixth grade, he started doing Habitat for Humanity construction projects and loved the feeling of giving back to his community. He and Beleri couples matched into residency. Vyas will train at Baylor University for internal medicine and wants to become a cardiologist to help people like his father who has cardiac disease. The two hope to return to the Orlando area someday to practice medicine.
Before entering med school, Alex Llauget provided psychological support to military veterans. Now he’s going to the University of South Florida to become an anesthesiologist. He said he has seen health problems, including addiction, that plague veterans who are in physical pain because of injuries. He hopes he can help prevent that pain through interventional surgery. “UCF taught me to continue to be humble,” he said, “that every patient is a human in need of care who needs to be seen and heard.”
Shirley Ke and Zachary Self also were inspired by veterans. Now military physicians, they will do their residency training at VA hospitals. As part of the graduation ceremonies, Ke and Self received their promotional ribbons from Dr. Jeff LaRochelle, the College of Medicine’s associate dean of academic affairs and a retired Air Force colonel with 24 years of military service.
Faculty speaker Dr. Stephen Lambert reminded graduates he had given them their very first class in medical school – on the life cycle of a cell — and was now giving them their last.
“After 16 years of trying, both here and at home, I finally get the last word,” he joked. And as he bid them farewell, Dr. Lambert, an avid sailor, sent off the new physicians with a sailor’s toast:
“To fair winds and following seas,
To sturdy ships and strong hearts,
To shipmates present and those long departed—
May our journey be steady,
Our course true,
And our spirits ever free.
Here’s to the sea that unites us,
And the courage that defines us.
Cheers!”
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- Class of 2025 Commencement physician knights residency match