Photo: Rob Carlin
The importance of embracing diverse educational methods to foster compassionate and inclusive health care professionals will be the subject of the 2025 Last Lecture at UMass Chan Medical School on Wednesday, May 7.
Mary Callery O’Brien, MD, associate professor of medicine, who received the 2024 Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Teaching and the Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching, will deliver the Last Lecture. Dr. O’Brien said she hopes to leave the audience with a sense of the progress and future direction of medical education at UMass Chan.
“We have to continue to highly regard education. To reinforce that idea and advance medical education in the right direction, we need to keep looking toward our north star and keep education at the forefront. Our researchers, our scientists, our clinicians and our teachers are the ones who do that,” O’Brien said.
The Last Lecture presented each year at the Educational Recognition Awards ceremony provides the recipient of the Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Teaching the opportunity to share a message with students and colleagues as if it were the last lecture they would ever give.
O’Brien said the opportunity to present the Last Lecture is a pinnacle achievement in her career. Her lecture, “Helping to Shape the Future of Health Care: The Multifaceted Roles of the Teacher in Advancing Medical Education,” will highlight the need for diversity and inclusion in medical education.
“I’ve witnessed the importance of education and collaboration, and advancing medical education through the past 30 years here. UMass Chan is a special place. Many of my esteemed teachers and mentors have received this award. This is the most prestigious award in teaching that you can receive at UMass Chan and it’s the honor of my career, rivaled only by the joy of patient care,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien is the chair of the Discovery Phase Curriculum Committee of the Vista Curriculum of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree from the College of the Holy Cross, earned her medical degree from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and completed her residency training at UMass Chan. She practices internal medicine in Shrewsbury.
The 2025 Educational Recognition Awards and Last Lecture, celebrating the exemplary UMass Chan faculty educators across the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, is being held on Wednesday, May 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. The celebration will be livestreamed on the UMass Chan YouTube channel.
