VC Notes - A weekly word from Dr. LouAnn Woodward
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Friday, May 27, 2022

The Class of 2022

Good morning!

As this edition of VC Notes hits your email inbox, the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2022 will soon be starting. If you’d like to watch it, it will be livestreamed on UMMC’s main Facebook page found here.

This is a momentous occasion for these graduates. Each year, you can feel in the room the eagerness to start a career practicing, teaching or researching the healing arts or take the next step in an already established career path. It’s invigorating. I still recall how excited I was on my medical school graduation day to walk across the stage, be hooded and get to work healing my fellow Mississippians. I’m sure many of today’s graduates feel a similar way and I love that level of enthusiasm.

Classof2022For many of those receiving degrees today, all or a significant portion of their training was done under the shadow of a pandemic and all the disruptions that it has brought to our daily lives. Their health science education journey was like none ever previously experienced. But, speaking directly to today’s graduates: You made it! Congrats.

I would also like to congratulate our faculty. The successes of the Class of 2022 are also your successes. You made it possible for these health science professionals to complete their full training, even if some of it looked different than in the past. Thank you for all of the extra effort you put into ensuring these professionals would be able to enter into the next step of their careers on time.

UMMC is an academic medical center. Health science education is our chief responsibility. I get a positive reminder of this each year when I stand on the Commencement stage and look out over the hundreds of graduates. I consider my role as leader of the largest producer of health professionals in Mississippi to be one of my greatest honors. The men and women wearing robes and mortar boards today will play an important role in the effort to create A Healthier Mississippi. 

Congratulations, graduates, on making it through this step of your career journey and also a huge THANKS to the family, classmates, colleagues and friends who helped you along the way.

Signed, Lou Ann Woodward, M.D.

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