Class of 2022 Welcomed to Medical Studies in White Coat Ceremony

With the temperature at 87 degrees, it seemed like Thursday, August 9, the day of the School of Medicine’s White Coat Ceremony, was going to be a scorcher. Instead, clouds rolled in from the southwest; a cool breeze swept into Harkness Plaza; and more than 400 staff, faculty, friends, and family members gathered under a tent outside Harkness Hall to watch as the School of Medicine’s Class of 2022 opened a new chapter of their lives.

“Today represents the culmination of decades of commitment on your part and on the part of our newest students,” said Robert J. Alpern, MD, dean and Ensign Professor of Medicine, addressing the families of the incoming class. To the class, he said, “Today is a momentous day in your evolution to become a physician.”

Alpern welcomed the new cohort of 104 scholars representing 55 colleges, including 15 Yalies. This class, as it has been since the mid-1990s, is almost evenly split between women and men (50 and 54 respectively), and includes 19 MD/PhD students. Almost a quarter of the class arrives from abroad, including students from Vietnam, China, and Canada.

In her keynote address, Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, chair and the William H. Carmalt Professor of Surgery, described a doctor’s responsibility for her patients. “The bond between you and your patient is supreme,” she said. Drawing on her own experiences with patients and her own thoughts and feelings on care, Ahuja urged the future doctors to prioritize generosity and empathy in their public and private lives. At the core of healing, she said, lies an obligation not only to do no harm but also to strive to do good.

“Although the medical school will change you, ultimately you’re the ones who will change the practice of medicine,” she said, before closing by welcoming the Class of 2022 to the “noble profession.”

As Ayaska Fernando, the school’s new director of admissions, called the young medical students forward, they filed one by one across the stage to receive their white coats from faculty and administrators as well as the gift of a stethoscope from the president and vice president of the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine.

The ceremony carries great symbolic meaning: it marks a beginning, and the physician’s white coat has long been associated with healing and purity. At Yale the ceremony is a tradition dating back to 1992, when Nicholas Spinelli, MD ’44, donated money so that his beloved alma mater could conduct the ceremony.

Students and families mingled after the ceremony at a reception that spilled over from the Harkness Courtyard and Ballroom. Susana Della Latta, the mother of Victor Diego Armengol, a student who had graduated from Harvard, said that her son had medicine in his blood and had wanted to be a doctor since childhood. “On my side of the family and on his father’s side, there are researchers and physicians going back generations,” said Della Latta, an artist.

Chloe Dlott, a student from California who had graduated with a major in biology and a minor in literature from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was grateful that her parents could attend, and said that she was enjoying getting to know her classmates. “It was amazing to see my peers in the context of the ceremony,” Dlott said, “They’re all so impressive.”