Dean’s Message
I’d like to welcome our affiliated and volunteer faculty members to COM Quarterly, an e-mail newsletter designed to let you know what’s happening at the UCF College of Medicine.
This month’s biggest news came as we welcomed our second class of 60 stellar medical students. I know some of you were concerned that you were unable to attend our “White Coat” ceremony on August. 2, where we welcomed the new students as colleagues in the field of health care. To respond to the community’s interest in the ceremony, we created a video of White Coat that soon will be available on our website, http://www.med.ucf.edu/.
Last year’s White Coat for our 41-member charter class was a large community event for a number of historic reasons, most notably the fact that the Central Florida community had donated millions of dollars to help us become the first college of medicine in U.S. history to offer full scholarships to an entire class. For that reason, our inaugural ceremony included many invited guests.
This year, however, given the increased number of students – and the number of family members who wanted to attend White Coat – we had to make a decision to make the event a more intimate gathering. Even with a minimum of invited guests, we were standing room only, and College of Medicine full-time faculty and staff members were placed in overflow rooms to accommodate the crowd.
We are already working to locate a larger facility for next year’s White Coat ceremony so that we can accommodate 80 new students, their family members and an expanded invited guest list.
Stories in this edition of COM Quarterly include updates on the White Coat Ceremony, our new medical education building and upcoming events that I hope you will attend. All of these stories show the spirit of giving that is inherent in the College of Medicine and in its affiliated and volunteer faculty members as we work together to become the medical school that belongs to us all.