Winter 2016 (Vol
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table of contents COLUMNS CLASS NOTES Message from the Interim Vice President Welcome New Alumni Director President’s Corner A Splitter’s Bonus Past and Present An Unexpected Reunion Syvertsen Awards MD-PhD Student Cynthia Hahn Named 2015-16 Syvertsen Fellow Alumni Awards Awards Celebrate Alumni Contributions to Medicine and to the Geisel Community message from the interim vice president PRODUCED BY THE GEISEL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE OFFICE OF ALUMNI RELATIONS CONTACT INFORMATION One Medical Center Drive (HB 7070) Lebanon, NH 03756 Tel: 603-653-0726 [email protected] www.geiselalumni.org http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu Sarah Baptie 603-653-0761 WELCOME NEW ALUMNI DIRECTOR Annette Rine 603-653-0726 GREETINGS, ALUMNI FRIENDS, For the past three months it has been my distinct pleasure to serve as interim vice president for EDITOR the joint Geisel/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Development & Alumni Relations Office. I was fortunate Kate Villars to come on board at a time of year when our calendar was in full swing, with medical school reunions in late September followed by the Syvertsen Scholars’ dinner, the fall meeting of the EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Annette Rine Alumni Council, and the annual Alumni Awards celebration. Added to this, we celebrated the completion of the medical school’s new Williamson Translational Research Building in October. CONTRIBUTORS Jennifer Durgin Through these events I’ve had the chance to meet dozens of you in just a short period of time. I Dana Cook Grossman have been uniformly impressed by your dedication to the Medical School and the strong sense A. Stuart Hanson of community forged during your time together, which so many of you carry with you years— Annette Rine Class Secretaries even decades—later. PHOTOGRAPHY It is that sense of community and your connection to the School and today’s students that our Jon Gilbert Fox Alumni Relations program seeks to nurture. Thus, I am pleased to introduce our new Director Tom McNeill of Annual Giving & Alumni Relations, Julie Bressor, who will join us in January. Mark Washburn Julie brings more than 15 years of experience in alumni relations and academic fundraising, most DESIGN & PRODUCTION Linnea Spelman recently as Director of Development at King’s College, University of Cambridge, where she built a robust alumni engagement program and significantly increased alumni participation in giving. Copyright Dartmouth College Winter 2016 (Vol. 20, No. 1) Under Julie’s leadership, the combined Annual Giving & Alumni Relations program will provide a unified point of engagement for DMS and Geisel alumni, whether that be through financial support, volunteering to assist and to advise students in various ways, participating COVER PHOTO: in alumni events, or simply being an ambassador for the School. Old friends reunite at the September 2015 reunion. As we welcome Julie, I also thank Kate Villars for stepping up to lead the annual giving and alumni relations programs through the transitions of the past year. She hands off to Julie a dedicated and enthusiastic staff and a strong foundation on which to build as we seek to involve you in shaping the future of the School you love. With warm regards, TRISH JACKSON INTERIM VICE PRESIDENT FOR DEVELOPMENT president’s corner AS ANTICIPATED, the turning of the seasons in the Upper Valley was lovely. Colors came late this year, making for a leisurely transition into fall. Geisel is hopping during this time of year with alumni events, and our alumni staff rose to the occasion(s) masterfully. We have celebrated, with DHMC, the Williamson Translational Research Building, wow! What a firm step into the future, facilitating collaboration among scientists of medicine, and a positive validation of developing programs, furthering possibilities for far reaching impact. The fall Alumni Council meeting provided it became popular, I split my fourth year opportunity for your representatives to of medical school to do research, take consider how we can practically support the extra electives, and oh yes, have a second medical school’s priorities such as student child. One perk of being a splitter (and now scholarship. In discussion with Leslie Hen- 30% of the Geisel student body chooses derson, who leads the Faculty and the Geisel this variation on the traditional four-year SARAH JOHANSEN, MD ’89 Diversity Council, we discussed the need course) is that I have two classes with PRESIDENT, ALUMNI COUNCIL for intentional engagement of our diverse which I identify and twice as many reunion alumni and recruitment of faculty and staff opportunities! to match our notably diverse student body. Our students long for contact with the amaz- ing role models in our alumni body. Our students long A Splitter’s The Syvertsen Committee met to select this year’s Scholars and Fellow (Cynthia for contact with Hahn), students who demonstrate purpose Bonus and passion as they contribute to their the amazing role sphere of influence. We celebrated the mentor, Rolf Syvertsen, MD, in whose models in our name not only the alumni-sponsored award is given, but also the largest student alumni body. scholarship fund, started by Sy’s boys and supported through ongoing alumni We enjoyed cocktails at the DOC and contributions. Alumni are making a dinners hosted by our peers. We hiked Gile difference in our students’ ability to afford Mountain and Holt’s Ledge on beautiful this costly education. fall days. We toured the changed facilities, The second annual Geisel Alumni pausing in Kellogg and Chilcott to tell Awards recognized eight of your amazing stories of Drs. Ebb and Floyd’s pranks, belly colleagues who have made significant dancers in pathology lab, and all the crazy, contributions to their medical disciplines formative experiences we had as students and in service to the medical school (See at DMS. We remembered those we have lost story here.) too soon. I felt so fortunate to have known Reunions were fabulous! This year was these amazing classmates and to see the the 25th reunion of my graduating class of impact they have had through their varied 1990. medical pursuits. If you have never been I’m a little embarrassed to confess that I to your reunion, put your next one on the also fully participated in my 25th reunion calendar and invite some friends. If you are last year with the class of 1989! Long before a splitter, come to both! past and present Jon Gilbert Fox Jon Barry Smith ’60 looks out over the Medical School’s old cemetery used for burying AN UNEXPECTED REUNION cadaver remains. A few of his A. STUART HANSON ’60 classmates, including Stu Hanson ’60, were summoned LOOKING BACK TO DAYS SPENT AT DARTMOUTH MEDICAL SCHOOL from to perform the burial in 1959, 1958 to 1960, several stories come to mind. A first day lecture by the Dean, under the watchful eye of Dean Rolf Syvertsen. afternoons in the anatomy lab, trying to keep awake during morning lectures, and burying our cadavers. In the 1950s and 1960s Dartmouth offered year school for the final two clinical years to the first two years of medical school. Most earn an M.D. degree. Why was this strange matriculants entered after three years of arrangement at the fourth oldest medical premed classes at Dartmouth College. After school in the country? completing the first year of the medial school, Dartmouth Medical School (now the the College awarded an A.B. (Artis Bacca- Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth) larius) degree. After completing a second was founded in 1797, 28 years after Dart- year, students received a certificate in basic mouth College. As the United States grew, medical sciences and transferred to a four- medical schools proliferated. There were no past and present national standards, no credentialing, and The 1811 education building had a main On the appointed Saturday afternoon, the little accountability when medical degrees lecture hall on the first floor immediately Dean and Harry Savage, the school secretary, were awarded. Into this vacuum the Carne- above the morgue. A false floor had in past loaded eight of us—four from the second year gie Foundation assigned Abraham Flexner years allowed anatomy specimens to be lifted class of ‘59 (“the venerables”) and four from to make a report on medical schools in the from the morgue to the front of the sloping my class of ‘60 (“the neophytes”)—into vehi- U.S. and Canada. The Flexner Report of 1912 classroom for demonstration. The hard cles with trailers holding digging tools. became the standard for medical education. seats with writing arms probably were the I had no idea where we were going, but Soon after, Dartmouth Medical School was originals. A narrow, rickety stairway led to a I was told the burial site was beyond the judged to be deficient in clinical medical second floor library and museum. Long tables College golf course. I rode with the Dean experiences and began offering only the with old wooden chairs were surrounded by north on Route 10. Just past the golf course he first two basic science years. Students then shelves and glass cases housing dusty books turned off onto a rough, rarely used dirt trail completed their clinical years in a larger city and large specimen jars containing human leading to an open field overlooking the Con- such as Boston, New York, Baltimore, or at a tissue specimens long past their prime for use necticut River. This land had been cleared for state university. as teaching aids. farming years before, and now it was going This was the situation when back to nature. There among 23 Dartmouth College seniors and the grasses and weeds were sets one graduate came to the first-day ANCIENT AND HONORABLE SECRET SOCIETY OF SEXTONS of stakes marking off 8x8-foot lecture by Dean Rolf Syvertsen squares designating previous in September 1958.