Attendees at the 2013 Commmencement watch Chancellor Michael F. Collins on video screens and on the stage.
In sweltering heat that failed to melt the enthusiasm of graduates and their supporters, the University of Massachusetts Worcester awarded 211 degrees, including two honorary degrees, at its 40th Commencement exercises on Sunday, June 2. Honorary degrees were presented to cardiologist James Dalen, MD, MPH, a founding UMass Chan faculty member and champion of integrated medicine, and former MIT president Susan Hockfield, PhD, the first life-scientist to lead the prestigious institution.
UMW awarded 117 doctor of medicine degrees; 32 doctor of philosophy degrees in the biomedical sciences; one master of science in clinical investigation degree; five MD/PhDs; and, in nursing, 49 master of science degrees, two post-masters certificates, one PhD and two doctor of nursing practice degrees.
• See our full coverage of Commencement, with slideshows, videos and stories
In his address to the graduates, Chancellor Michael F. Collins warned that actions such as the across-the-board sequestration cuts are endangering the academic medicine culture that helped save lives during the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon.
“It was no accident that so many capable health care professionals, those present at the scene and those waiting in the emergency and operating rooms, saved so many lives,” said Chancellor Collins, who later in the ceremony honored the Boston Marathon first responders. “The area’s academic medical centers, which have received tremendous support and have been enabled to fuse the fundamental mission of providing clinical care with a commitment to medical training and research, were prepared to fulfill their public responsibility to promote and protect the health and well-being of all those who may be entrusted to their care.
“We are being ‘tiered’ into a corner by forces that question the vital value of academic medicine in America,” he said. “Can we commit to today’s students and graduates that the infrastructure and the environment that represent generations of wise investment in training and research will be there to support them tomorrow?”
Dr. Dalen asked this class of graduates to do what his generation could not. “You need to help solve our nation’s greatest public health problem: the fact that U.S health care costs are highest in the world,” said Dalen. He addressed two reasons for this high cost: the overuse of high-tech procedures and the under-emphasis of preventative care.
“My generation of physicians overused high tech procedures and underestimated low tech preventions,” he said. “We are too dependent on technology and the urge to overuse it.”
Dr. Hockfield talked about the significance of graduates receiving what may be their last formal degree. “I foresee for all of you that you will have many opportunities to continue your education informally and I can simply tell you that my informal educational opportunities have been as exhilarating and certainly as joyful as any formal opportunities that preceded them,” she said. “So today, I simply want to thank you for pursuing the paths you have elected. Lives of service and careers of service are not the common route in this nation today. I thank you for taking the route less traveled.”
The three student speakers gave their fellow graduates advice based on their shared learning experiences.
“I imp
