By Keith Gillogly

During the school’s annual White Coat Ceremony on July 17, 180 MD students and eight MD-PhD students were welcomed into the profession before an audience of family, friends and supporters at UB’s Center for the Arts.

Long considered a rite of passage, white coat ceremonies officially welcome students to the study of medicine while instilling the values of compassion, professionalism and empathy needed to practice medicine. 

Welcoming the students and audience, David A. Milling, MD ’93, senior associate dean for medical education, reflected on the meaning and tradition behind the day’s ceremony.

“Medicine is full of rituals and traditions. This is one of our most important,” he said. “It shows us and sets the tone as we start this important journey through medicine.”

Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, dean of the Jacobs School and UB’s vice president for health sciences, invited the new class to pause and remember this day, “the beginning of a very great journey,” because in just four years they’ll be walking across the stage again.

While addressing the crowd, Brashear spoke about the white coat as a symbol of achievement, dedication, possibility and trust.

“Patients often meet us when they are in the most vulnerable times in their lives,” Brashear said.

Yet patients trust physicians with their fears, hopes and personal stories, she added.

“And that trust is so, so very important.”

Selected from a highly competitive pool of 6,894 applicants, the Class of 2030 brings impressive academic credentials and diverse life experiences to the Jacobs School.

The average GPA is 3.8 and the average MCAT score is 511. Sixty-two percent of the class are women, and 15 percent are first-generation college students.

Eighty-nine percent of the Class of 2030 are from New York State, and 40 percent are from Western New York. Eighteen percent earned their undergraduate degrees from UB.

In all, 16 states are represented. Twenty-seven students have master’s degrees and one has a doctoral degree. More than 30 percent of the students identify as bilingual.

Introducing the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Alysia V. Kwiatkowski, DO, Milling praised the hard work and genuine care for students embodied by the school’s medical education team.

“No one signifies this more than Dr. K and what she does every day to make us better,” he said.

Kwiatkowski is assistant dean for medical curriculum and director of educator development in the Jacobs School’s Medical Education and Educational Research Institute (MEERI).

But long before assuming those titles, she recalls being a medical student, nervous about her first day of anatomy lab and dissection.

The room, filled with more than 100 anxious learners, smelled thick with formaldehyde.  Feeling out of place in bright red scrubs, she worried she’d pass out.

But her bigger concern was “Will I be good enough?” she remembers asking herself.

Kwiatkowski, it turns out, did not pass out. And she realized that feelings of self-doubt are universal, even beneficial.

“Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of medical students and residents,” said Kwiatkowski, who’s also a clinical associate professor of medicine. “People often ask me whether I can tell who’s going to be a remarkable physician.”

The best physicians aren’t necessarily those with the highest MCAT scores or the ones who always knew the answers. Rather, she says, the best physicians notice what they don’t know, the people around them, and the person behind the illness; they never stop paying attention to self-improvement and who they are becoming.

“They notice. They notice what they don't know. They notice the people around them. They notice the person behind the illness. And throughout it all, they continue noticing who they themselves are becoming,” Kwiatkowski said.

The best also “carry humility and humanity into their professional identity,” she said.

“Your patients will remember whether you listened. Their families will remember whether you explained. And they will remember whether you preserved their dignity with humanity.” 

The ceremony also included recognition of a faculty member who exemplifies the qualities students were encouraged to cultivate throughout their medical careers.

Michael R. DiGiacomo, MD ’09, associate director of medical education and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry, was presented with the 2026 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award.

Sponsored by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the Tow Award recognizes a faculty member who demonstrates outstanding compassion in the delivery of care; respect for patients, their families and health care colleagues; and demonstrates clinical excellence. The recipient was chosen by Jacobs School Class of 2026 medical graduates.

“As [DiGiacomo] teaches our students at the bedside, he shows empathy, genuine concern and, in spite of being in a highly stressful environment, he creates a therapeutic space for patients and learners,” said Samantha Bordonaro, MD, assistant dean for student and academic affairs and assistant professor of emergency medicine, while presenting the award. 

As each student was called forward during the cloaking ceremony, Fred D. Archer III, MD, read their name, hometown, undergraduate degree institution, and the name of their Learning Community neighborhood in the new Well Beyond curriculum. Archer is associate dean and director of admissions and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics.

Students all shared big smiles and received resounding applause walking across the stage. Many were cloaked by family members, mentors and others close to their hearts.

The ceremony concluded with members of the Class of 2030 reciting the Oath of Medicine, affirming their commitment to ethical practice, compassionate care and the responsibilities carried by physicians.

“The white coat means a few things to me,” said Dennis Swetz, a Class of 2030 new medical student. “I see it as a symbol of hope, a symbol of care, something that, when people see it, they know they’re going to be safe and that someone’s looking out for them and trying to take care of them.”