Rosemarie Dizon will become a doctor on Saturday. She has to let that fact sink in for a minute before she can reflect on her four years as a member of the charter class of Campbell’s Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine.
Her medical school journey, she said, was colored with both difficulties and triumphs.
“I am grateful for the experiences and relationships I have gained through Campbell,” said Dizon, a Maryland native who earned her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey. “I felt that the quality of my clinical training proved itself during my clinical rotations when preceptors were impressed by the overall performance of us Campbell Student Doctors. It makes me proud to be a part of such an accomplished inaugural class.”
Dizon will be among the 150 candidates for Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degrees at the medical school’s inaugural graduation ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday at the John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center on Campbell’s main campus. Three candidates are also in line to receive a Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences degree at the ceremony.
The charter class, which launched North Carolina’s first new medical school in more than 35 years in the fall of 2013, will become the first Campbell-produced medical doctors in the school’s 130-year history. Many are set to begin residencies at hospitals in some of North Carolina’s most medically underserved regions.
“This is an exciting time,” said Dr. John M. Kauffman, Jr., the medical school’s founding dean and chief academic officer. “The past four years have been full of milestones for the inaugural class and our school simultaneously, and this class of pioneers has met each benchmark with success.
“As they become the first class of Campbell University physicians Saturday, they will carry our mission and values into practice in North Carolina and across the country.”
The celebration will begin well before Saturday’s ceremony. Wednesday night will feature an awards dinner (6 p.m.) honoring students with outstanding academic achievements, as well as faculty and staff. A Military Promotion Ceremony will be held Friday morning (10 a.m.) in Butler Chapel for the 10 Health Professions Scholars — like Dizon (Navy) — who will continue their respective medical careers in the U.S. armed forces. That ceremony will include the 82nd Airborne Color Guard and Chorus and guest speaker Col. John Lammie, MD, director of medical education at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Liberty.
Saturday’s commencement address will be delivered by the school’s namesake, former Campbell President and current Chancellor Jerry Wallace. Wallace pushed for the school after a 2009 trip to the medical school at William Carey University in Mississippi and determined immediately that Campbell was the right place for the state’s first school of osteopathic medicine.
The First Four Years
Click the photos below for stories published during the first four years of Campbell University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine.
