- College of Medicine Student Affairs Students
As they gathered for the last time before graduation, UCF College of Medicine seniors celebrated on Friday their memories, accomplishments and lessons from the last four years. At a celebration on the medical school’s Tavistock Green and piazza, they reflected on being part of a young M.D. program that’s helping to build a Medical City just minutes from one of the world’s most visited airports.
Their biggest lessons, they said, were how to make a difference and bring UCF’s pioneering spirit to the care of others. As Hannah Wilson, who is going on to an OB-GYN residency at University of South Florida, explained, “If something isn’t there, go ahead and create it.”
The College of Medicine will graduate 119 new Physician Knights on May 16. They are entering specialties including internal and family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, dermatology, surgery ophthalmology and anesthesiology and will do their residency training at top hospitals across Florida and the United States.
“You helped the UCF College of Medicine establish a national and an international reputation. You set the bar high for those who will follow you in the classroom, the laboratory, the clinic and the community,” said Dr. Marcy Verduin, associate dean of students. “This is the moment that we have all been working towards – your graduation represents your transformation from novice learners into young physicians who we eagerly welcome as our colleagues.”
Graduates like Nicholas and Kristin Pekmezian talked about what makes UCF unique. They said students work together and support each other. The culture isn’t cut-throat competitive as it is at other medical schools. They talked about friendships that will last a lifetime and reminisced about ways they coped together through long hours of studying and caring for patients.
At Class Day, as students were taking photos of best friends, the Pekmezians also took a photo with Michael Pugh, a College of Medicine AV specialist who was setting up logistics for the event. They said they consider Pugh family. He was with them during classes, at events. He saw them when they were jubilant, tired, successful and unsure. “The staff and faculty are always there to offer support,” Kristin said. “They are available any time we need them.” The Pekmezians met during their first year of medical school and were married several months ago. Both will train at Orlando Health – he in orthopedic surgery, she in internal medicine.
Jospeh Nygaard is going into family medicine and will do his residency at Cone Health in Greensboro, N.C. He said he chose family medicine because he fell in love with every specialty when he went through third-year clerkships. When he went into a new clerkship, he missed his earlier patients. Family medicine, he says, gives him an opportunity to care for children through seniors with all kinds of conditions. He doesn’t have to choose. Nygaard brought his 4-month-old daughter to Class Day and said his inspiration for medicine came from his father, a beloved pediatrician in their home state of Utah. “Everywhere we’d go someone would want to come up and hug my dad. He was such a big part of the community,” he said. “And that’s what I want to be. The biggest lesson I learned at UCF is that we all have so much potential to do so much good. People are depending on us to make good things happen.”
While their futures are going in different paths, Collin Hoggard and Danny Sullivan said their biggest lesson from UCF’s medical school was the same – how to genuinely connect with people. Hoggard is entering OB-GYN at Corewell Health at Michigan State University. “The biggest lesson I learned was how to be truly attentive talking and listening to patients,” he said. Hoggard described being at a hospital in the middle of the night during his clerkship training when a patient was brought in after falling. She and her family were very upset. He connected with her, told her how much he liked her newly painted nails. She joked that she was supposed to get her hair done too – before her injury. He said they would take care of her so she could get her hair done soon. “I didn’t do anything medical for her,” he said, “I just listened and spoke with her. We connected. The next day the program director told me he had met the patient and her family, and they talked about the wonderful young medical student who had cared for them.”
Sullivan is moving on to Tufts for a psychiatry residency. He was drawn to that specialty because he says improving mental health involves care of the entire person – and a teamwork approach among healthcare providers. He also thinks connecting with others was the biggest lesson of his UCF medical school training. “It’s all about community,” he said. “My favorite part of medicine is talking to my patients. I can teach them about health, and they can teach me all about life.”
Class Day festivities also included awards. Here is a list of the honorees.
• Dean’s Award — Alison Grisé
• Hippocratic Oath Award — Dr. James Sanders
• Outstanding Senior in Internal Medicine — Marianne Sia
• Outstanding Senior in Family Medicine — Vasiliki Beleri
• Outstanding Senior in Neurology — Mara Robinson
• Outstanding Senior in Obstetrics and Gynecology — Collin Hoggard, Kelly Sutter
• Outstanding Senior in Pediatrics — Claudia Orozco-Vega
• Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Award — Stephany Bustamante
• Outstanding Senior in Psychiatry — Shayaan Ahmed
• Outstanding Senior in Surgery — Divya Kudapa
• Academic Excellence award
o Quinn Ferguson
o Alison Grisé
o Daniel Keith
o Zachary Self
o Chelsea Wu
• Faculty Choice Award — Stephany Bustamante
• Student Choice award — Vasiliki Beleri
• Osler Award — Quinn Ferguson
• Service and Humanity in Medicine Award — Aliya Centner
• Distinguished Community Service Award — Anna Wanzenberg
• Excellence in Community Health Award — Hannah Wilson.
• Development of Independent Student Analysis for LCME visit — Shivani Gupta, Nicholas Pekmezian
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- Class of 2025