The latest doctors and dentists to graduate from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine are well prepared for the many challenges they will face, poised to bring exciting new advances to science and technology, and deeply compassionate about applying the healing arts to improve the well-being of all people, agreed speakers at the May 23 Class Day celebration on the HMS Quad.
The graduation ceremony was briefly delayed due to thunderstorms that brought heavy rain, hail, and lightning to the Longwood area. It was just another opportunity for the members of the Class of 2024 to show the grit, resilience, and humor they demonstrated so often during their time at Harvard.
In his remarks, HMS Dean George Q. Daley noted that the graduates have many challenges deserving of their attention — including humanitarian crises, poverty, malnutrition, mental health challenges, lack of access to critical health care, and a global climate crisis — but said he is confident in their capacity to help heal the world.
“You are passionate, you are industrious, and, notably, you are resilient,” Daley said.
Ceremony Stories
Many of the graduates belong to the first cohort of doctors, dentists, and scientists whose entire careers have taken shape amid the COVID-19 pandemic — but that also included the possibility of research and care based on gene editing tools such as CRISPR and access to technologies powered by artificial intelligence.
Building on the work they have already done at HMS and HSDM and at organizations and programs they have founded, the graduates will research, teach, and practice medicine in an increasingly collaborative style that reaches across disciplines, partners with patients and communities, and addresses concerns at scales from single molecules to global systems of health care, climate change, and economics.
Keynote speaker Melissa Gilliam, an HMS alumna and the incoming president of Boston University, offered advice on how to live a life of service at what she called “this challenging and beautiful time.”
She said that for all the different roles she has played in her career — physician, scientist, educator, and university administrator — she has remained focused on three principles: “Love yourself, love one another, and love humankind.”
“In our professions, we will make mistakes, we will save lives, and we will have complications; we will often make a difference, but sometimes we will fail to make a difference,” Gilliam said. “But if we see one another’s humanity and hold others with love and dignity — regardless of who they are, what they think, who they love, how they think, or where they come from — we will help them, and you will come ever closer to achieving your aspirations of service.”
Resilience and determination
Many celebrants reflected on the extraordinary challenges the graduates faced during their medical and dental education.
“This graduating class has demonstrated incredible resilience,” said Fidencio Saldaña, HMS dean for students. “They have developed into outstanding clinicians and leaders. We have a great deal to celebrate and are incredibly proud.”
For LaShyra Nolen, one of three graduating students to co-moderate the ceremony, the scramble to adjust to the weather emergency was just another day in the life of the Class of 2024.
“It wouldn’t be our class if there wasn’t a little drama,” Nolen said.
