From the Dean

Often we speak of our scientific breakthroughs in the laboratory, or of our major advances in patient care. We cite our faculty’s success in securing research funding, our world-class facilities, innovative programs in education, and partnerships forged around the globe. Indeed, these stories and measures tell us much about who we are and what we do. However, with our 160th graduating class now entering residency training and a new medical student class poised to arrive in Ann Arbor, I am reminded that the foundation upon which our entire institution is built is our educational mission. The students and residents who come to Michigan to learn and be trained are the clinicians, researchers and faculty of tomorrow.

We at Michigan are privileged to teach an outstanding group of students. It’s far more than their undergraduate grades and MCAT scores that makes them outstanding; it’s their amazing ambition and ideals, a thirst for knowledge, and fervor to make the world a healthier place. As some of the best and brightest in the country, they in turn stimulate us as faculty to achieve our very best. The synergies created by our students result, ultimately, in our greatest accomplishments as an academic research institution. Our educational mission not only prepares the future leaders of medicine, it inspires the present.

The students featured in our cover story will be familiar faces to most of our readers. Members of the Class of 2012, they comprise the group we’re following through their medical studies. They are incredible individuals, each with a bright and impactful future ahead of them. They ably represent their many classmates, current and to come, who are the future of medicine and carry on our tradition of “leaders and best.”

Sincerely,

James O. Woolliscroft, M.D. (Residency 1980)
Dean, U-M Medical School
Lyle C. Roll Professor of Medicine