Celebrating the Diversity of our Alumni Body

At the last DMS Alumni Council meeting, we invited two of the leading faculty at DMS, Drs. Constance Brinckerhoff and Joyce DeLeo, to talk with us about our basic sciences graduate programs. These programs have grown in size and have evolved significantly over the last 10 years. Today, our graduate sciences are organized into two umbrella programs: Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and the Program in Experimental and Molecular Medicine (PEMM). Established in the early 1990s, MCB incorporates faculty from biology, biochemistry, and microbiology and shares common admissions and administrative functions to improve the services and support to students. PEMM is in its fourth year of admitting students and is notable for close integration with the clinical side of medicine. These programs attract superb applicants—both external candidates and from within DMS—and foster the interdisciplinary collaborations needed to maximize clinical and translational research. At commencement last year, DMS awarded 40 PhD degrees and five MD-PhD degrees.

This was also an opportunity to acknowledge the various cohorts that make up the Medical School and thus the larger DMS alumni body. These include not only MDs, but also MPH, MS, and PhD graduates of The Dartmouth Institute, and members of the basic science departments who complete their studies at the master’s and doctoral levels. In addition, interns, residents, and fellows who train at Dartmouth-Hitchcock are considered “housestaff alumni.” This diversity across the alumni diaspora reflects Dartmouth’s prominence in the broad scope of research and clinical care and is something to celebrate.

It was also fitting that DMS’s graduate basic sciences programs were represented at our meeting by two outstanding women scientists, in that this academic year marks the 50-year anniversary of the first woman admitted to Dartmouth Medical School. To mark this important anniversary, students and alumni are planning several events over the next year and a half. These will culminate in the summer of 2012 when DMS hosts Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians, a traveling exhibit of the National Library of Medicine. Women and men of DMS, please send your ideas for honoring this anniversary to the alumni relations office, and stay tuned for upcoming communications.

Pearl O’Rourke, MD ’73
President, DMS Alumni Council

Read Pearl O’Rourke’s previous “President’s Corner” message

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