Dear Fellow Alumni,
It has been my distinct pleasure to serve as the School of Medicine Alumni board president. As my tenure expires in June, I can look back over the past two years and be proud of all that we have accomplished as a board.
Our mission is to engage our alumni, and support our students and school. To that end, we have continued with our extremely successful individual class reunions, provided career advice, presented multiple financial awards to our students and identified extraordinary distinguished alumni.
Each year we grant a $10,000 award to a third-year student, identified by the faculty, who exemplifies excellence in both clinical and research elements. This substantial award can help students who would otherwise have debts over $300,000 after four years of medical school. Unfortunately, the school is in dire need to offer more financial assistance to remain competitive with the other high quality schools. It is our goal to continue to award more to our exceptional current and potential students. In other great news, we were also fortunate to sponsor six first and second-year students with a $1500 award for their international medical mission. We see that the students return from these trips with a deep appreciation of our global health issues.
My thirty-year class reunion for the Class of 1988 will take place in April. Although we had a reunion only four years ago, I am looking forward to reconnecting with my former classmates. We had started a class endowment gift to send students on international medical missions and hopefully, with the generosity of the class we will add to the endowment. In addition to our class celebrating, we will also host reunions for the Classes of 1978, 1983, 1997 and 1998 this year. For further information about reunions, please contact Mary Hoffmann at mary.hoffmann@stonybrook.edu .
As you read each of the articles in Medicine Today, we hope you’ll appreciate Stony Brook Medicine’s relentless pursuit of distinction academically, clinically and in our research achievements.
Sincerely,
Debra Messina, MD ’88
President, Stony Brook University School of Medicine Alumni Board
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