Burnett School of Medicine at TCU Welcomes the Class of 2028
More than 6,590 applied to be one of 60 students selected for the class of 2028. The first-year medical students represent 18 states with more than a quarter from Texas.
FORT WORTH – The Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University welcomed its sixth cohort of 60 new medical students on their medical education journey with two weeks of focused curriculum and a White Coat Celebration.
“We are thrilled to welcome our sixth group of Empathetic Scholars® and future physicians,” said Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., the Founding Dean of the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. “This group will begin their medical education journey in our brand new medical education building in the heart of Fort Worth’s Medical Innovation District (MID) just steps away from all our clinical partners. This group has a distinctive opportunity to learn to practice medicine with empathy and amass deep medical knowledge from physicians and patients in our community.”
More than 6,590 applied to be one of 60 medical students selected for the class of 2028. The first-year medical students represent 18 states with more than a quarter from Texas. There are also eight students that graduated from TCU. Fifty-seven percent of the class self-identifies with one or more of the three school-defined diversity domains: race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, or socio-economic limitation.
First-year medical student Sylvie Inkindi was selected by her peers to represent the class of 2028 at the White Coat Celebration. Inkindi worked as a Public Health Microbiologist with the Los Angeles County Public Health Lab before coming to medical school.
“We may have taken different paths but we all find ourselves here today finally donning our white coats.,” Inkindi said. “This moment represents the culmination of years of hard work but it also marks the beginning of a lifelong commitment to the noble profession of medicine.”
Every year, white coat ceremonies are held by medical schools across the United States. New medical students receive their short white coats signifying the beginning of their journey to achieve the long white coat, when they are physicians, according to the American Medical Association.
Burnett School of Medicine at TCU students received their white coats at TCU’s Legends Club at Amon G. Carter Stadium in front of faculty, staff, family, and friends. The medical school puts its own twist on the traditional celebration by having family members gather around each medical student to help them put on their white coat for the first time.
Floyd Wormley Jr., Ph.D., Interim Provost, Vice Provost for Research, and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at TCU, served as a guest speaker at the celebration. Friends and family will be essential in supporting students through the arduous journey of medical school, he added.
“You will encounter many challenges on your journey and you have the opportunity to discover solutions to vexing problems,” Dr. Wormley said. “Don’t be afraid to battle the unknown to look for better treatments and cures. You can be the one who takes on these challenges whether in the lab or in the clinic. A doctor’s task is all about discovery. At TCU, we emphasize that by encouraging students to innovate and become life-long learners.”
The Burnett School of Medicine graduated its second class of medical students in May. The school’s novel Empathetic Scholar® curriculum prepares students to be compassionate physicians with a breadth of medical knowledge to tackle rapid advances in medicine.
The medical school’s bold mission is to transform medical education by emphasizing communications training, partnering students with patients and physicians from their first day through the Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship model, and world-class simulation and technology training using the Microsoft HoloLens® and HoloAnatomy® mixed-reality learning experience. Students are also challenged to become life-long learners capable of critical inquiry through the Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT) four-year research project that every student is required to complete upon graduation.
“The way we’ve designed this forward-thinking curriculum puts our medical students at the forefront of medical innovation,” Dean Flynn said. “They will be equipped with unique skills to deliver patient care now and into the future while having the ability to adapt to new medical advances as they arise.”
