Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine held its first ever virtual graduation ceremony on Saturday.
This year’s graduating class included 103 medical students. Gary LeRoy, the Boonshoft associate dean for student affairs and admission, said this year’s class now has something more special than a traditional graduation ceremony.
“They are coming into medicine during a monumental time in world history that cannot be reproduced by reading a book or looking at a video tape,” LeRoy said. “They’re living that and they’re going to be the front line soldiers out there fighting this pandemic for the next few months or maybe years. They are literally graduating into a very unique time in the history of human kind.”
Rinki Goswami, a graduating Boonshoft student from Beavercreek, and her family watched the live stream of the ceremony from home. Then because of Saturday’s beautiful weather, they headed to Cox Arboretum MetroPark so her father, also a doctor, could ceremoniously “hood” his daughter, as is tradition for graduating medical students.
Saturday was the 40th anniversary of the first Boonshoft graduating class.
Though completely virtual, LeRoy, Wright State University President Susan Edwards, Boonshoft Dean Margaret Dunn and associate dean for medical education Brenda Roman pre-recorded parts of the ceremony as if it were taking place live at a studio on campus. Announcements were sent to alumni and friends of the Boonshoft, living around the world, to invite them to tune in.
