Tomorrow is the Fourth and it is July—steamy and sunny.
Without assiduous watering, the flowers droop and wilt, and the humans come down with heat stroke! Air conditioning is the order of the day, and older homes in our inner-ring suburbs fight to stay cool.
Robocalls from the city warn elderly residents to stay indoors in air conditioning and shade, and the newspaper reports that an avid and intrepid gardener collapsed while she was weeding in the sun and heat. The heat can be lethal.
And yet, excitement is afoot as we prepare for a new entering class of medical students, once again spectacularly qualified, once again eager and dewy and fresh. I was at an alumni event in Orange County this past weekend and met one of our entering students, recently graduated from Harvard, who attended the meeting and was so jazzed to be on his way here.
This class is built, in part, on the efforts of our alumni who hosted dinners at Second Look Weekend. This year, 120 prospective medical students and 21 MSTPs attended (still leaving 49 on the wait list). And the yield was better than ever: 78 percent! A highlight was the Saturday night alumni home dinners, and our alumni hosts can be proud! This should be another terrific class, and a joy to teach and get to know.
We will also welcome a new crop of graduate students this month. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the training faculty, more students accepted our offers of admission—increasing from about 30 percent to about 41 percent, for a total of 35 BSTP matriculates this year versus 17 BSTP plus 6 in departments last year. It is a real tribute to the hard work of the programs’ leadership and the basic science chairs that we have so many additional high-quality students enrolling—it’s a real boost to our research programs.
I wish you a wonderful Fourth of July, cool and shady, and encourage you to gather your energies for meeting our new medical students next week and to attend the medical student White Coat Ceremony on Sunday the 15th at 11 AM in Severance Hall. Consider, too, attending the Seeds of Discovery program on August 24 that welcomes our new graduate students (though many arrive earlier for a summer rotation).
It’s looking to be a great year!
Pam
Pamela B. Davis, MD, PhD
Dean, School of Medicine
Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs, Case Western Reserve University
Arline and Curtis Garvin Research Professor
2109 Adelbert Rd. BRB 113
Cleveland OH 44106