On Saturday, June 3, 2006, at 10 a.m., commencement exercises for Ohio University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM) were held at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium. The graduating Class of 2006 was the 27^th for the medical school. The college’s graduation is held a week earlier than the university’s other commencement exercises. This was the seventh independent graduation for OU-COM.

The commencement was convened by Larry Schey, M.B.A., a member of the Ohio University Board of Trustees, after which Ohio University President Roderick McDavis took the podium.

“As president of Ohio University,” said McDavis, “I have been continuously impressed by the significant role OU-COM plays in the health of our citizens, not just in the Appalachian region but also to those living elsewhere in the United States.

“Just this last November, Ohio magazine named the faculty and staff of OU-COM ‘Ohio Heroes’ for taking on the responsibility of providing medical care to residents in 21 counties who otherwise might not be able to routinely get basic health care.”

The college, he said, is a community of people with a deep concern for the individual, which is reflected in the care given to an African villager or a resident of Southeastern Ohio.

He congratulated the members of the graduating Class of 2006 for their hard work and dedication, which had prepared them, he said, to be outstanding osteopathic physicians and leaders of 21^st Century medicine.

One hundred four participated in the graduation — 63 women and 41 men — which included 27 minority students and 16 Southeastern Ohio residents. Eleven are members of the U.S. armed forces.

Among those on stage with McDavis were Shannon Campbell, D.O. (’06), the representative of the Class of 2006; Victor Angel, D.O., president-elect of the Ohio Osteopathic Association; Robert Juhasz, D.O., a member of the board of trustees of the American Osteopathic Association; Thomas Anderson, D.O. (’83), president of the OU-COM Society of Alumni and Friends; and OU-COM Dean Jack Brose, D.O., each of whom addressed the class, and commencement speaker Sister Anne Brooks, D.O., co-founder of the nationally recognized Tutwiler Clinic in Mississippi.

“As you enter the next phase of your career,” Anderson told the graduates as he welcomed them into the ranks of alumni, “many dynamic experiences await you in your internship and residency. This is certainly an exciting time in your life.

“Throughout your career you will have many opportunities to learn from your patients, colleagues, friends and family. Take advantage of each one to extend your knowledge. With each opportunity, you will strengthen your knowledge and wisdom as a person and as a physician.

“Always carry in your mind the lessons you have learned at OU-COM, and use your talents and training to improve the lives of your patients. I’m confident you will maintain and enhance this proud legacy of caring and compassionate osteopathic medicine.”

President McDavis introduced Dean Brose, who congratulated the members of the Class of 2006 for achieving their goal of becoming physicians and surgeons and admonished them to uphold the ideals and honor of the osteopathic profession.

“Of all the duties I have as dean,” said Brose, “placing the hoods and congratulating each and every one of you is my favorite. I can’t imagine a greater honor. Today I can truly share the incredible pride that I’m sure our audience members feel.”

He continued, “We have much to celebrate at OU-COM as we conclude our thirtieth year. Among Ohio’s seven medical schools, OU-COM consistently has the highest percentage of graduates practicing in Ohio. The college and its Centers for Osteopathic Research and Education network of hospitals add more than one billion dollars annually to the Ohio economy. And as reported in Ohio magazine last fall, almost every day for the last 10 years, staff members from our Community Service Programs have taken two 40-ft. vans to parking lots, churches, schools, libraries and food pantries in 21 Ohio counties to serve low-income, uninsured or underinsured residents.

“On the research front, faculty and students have set equally impressive benchmarks. For example, patients all over the world now use a medication that treats acromegaly, a disease for which there was previously no specific medical treatment. This ground-breaking medication was invented right here in Athens by Dr. John Kopchick, one of our faculty. And we now have a diabetes center dedicated to curing one of the nation’s common diseases.

“This year we are breaking ground on an interdisciplinary research center that will allow medical school faculty and students to collaborate on research with colleagues from many other Ohio University colleges.”

But, Brose said, “the crown jewel” of today’s celebration was the Class of 2006. “You are being honored by becoming a member of America’s most rapidly growing health-care profession. By 2020 it is estimated that there will be more than 95,000 osteopathic physicians. That will be 70 percent higher than today.”

“I am extremely proud and grateful that you — the physicians and surgeons of the Class of 2006 — have chosen to carry the banner of our profession.”

After an introduction by President McDavis, Sister Brooks delivered the keynote address. Sister Brooks, a 1982 graduate of Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and three other sisters from the Order of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary founded the Tutwiler Clinic, located in the Mississippi Delta, one of the nation’s poorest regions, in 1983. Founded on the mission of providing holistic health care to all, regardless of their ability to pay, the clinic has become a community health system that sees between 7,000 and 9,000 patients a year. Brooks and the Tutwiler Clinic have earned national recognition and been featured on a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Though an osteopathic physician, Sister Brooks was one of four physicians to be honored with the American Medical Association Foundation’s Pride in the Profession Award in 2005. She is the recipient of the Michigan State University Distinguished Alumni Award and received OU-COM’s Phillips Medal of Public Service in 1987. 

Sister Brooks told the members of the Class of 2006 that they needed to holistic caregivers, who treat the whole being of their patients and empower their patients to “deal with their lives and the challenges that they face at every level so they can heal themselves.”

“We are not healers,” she said. “We are physicians who touch, who communicate compassion in our touch. We are doctors who tap into the power of the universe and by touching our patients awaken that power in them.”

“We are facilitators who enable our patients to go to the well-spring of energy in the center of their souls and be energized for health.”

Brooks treats the poorest of the poor in this country and showed through several examples, that being a physician is, she said, about compassionate care of your patients.

“You will care for patients at all hours, like the 15-year-old girl who rang my doorbell at 2 o’clock in the morning the day after Christmas some years ago telling me she was having her baby; she knew because she saw it coming out. She had a double footling breech, very dead five-month-old fetus there on the couch in my living room.

“You will care for patients in all kinds of places,” she said, “sometimes in very strange circumstances, as when one of my teens who was playing Russian roulette in front of the court house to impress his girlfriend and became an instant quadriplegic, telling me he couldn’t feel his hands while I was inserting his IV as he laid there on the pavement.”

She told the graduating doctors that they could have no idea of how their patients would nourish them and how they would treasure their support and care, as the patient, she said, “whose brain was crippled by retardation and who gave me a very crumpled small brown paper bag saying, ‘This is ‘cause yer nice to me.’ It was a packet of BC powder, a few matches and a pencil.”

Among the things she said she had learned was that there is a difference between disease and illness. A disease, she said, is a biological entity or event that disrupts our health and lives. “A disease is something that has assaulted our well-being, and we seek to get rid of it.” 

“An illness,” she said, “is how we experience that disease at every level of our existence.” Similarly, lies the difference between curing and healing, she said.

“A disease is potentially curable — your cold will go away; your fracture will heal.” But illnesses, she said, are not cured but rather healed.

“It is possible to have an incurable disease but to be healed; in other words, our relationships at every level are balanced.

She explained, “Some of us know people who are sick, maybe with cancer, but they have dealt with that disease, perhaps for years, but they are living life; their personalities are whole. They have risen above the sickness and are able to reach out to others. That’s healing.”

Doctors, she said, are facilitators of their patient’s healing.

“Because you are a doctor,” she said, “you will be expected to know everything. But what you really need to know is how to listen. Really listen.“Because you are a doctor, you will be expected to be able to do everything. But what you really need to do is care. Really care.

“Your diploma states that you are now a doctor of osteopathy. This diploma is confirmation that you have now received the power that you need to begin to live your life as a compassionate osteopathic physician whose holistic care empowers your patients for health.”

This world, she said, will be a better place because they would listen and care. Because they would touch and empower others.

“And may God, ever the force in our lives, ever the compassion in our touch, be with you. Now and forever.”

University Provost Katherine Krendl, Ph.D., presided over the conferral of degrees to the Class of 2006. Brose hooded the graduates as they received their doctor of osteopathic medicine (D.O.) degrees.

Graduates earning outstanding student awards were Shannon Nikole McAfee, D.O. (’06), Osteopathic Heritage Award; Shannon Maureen Campbell, D.O. (’06), Dean’s Award; Kent Christopher Brandeberry, D.O. (’06), Family Practice Award; Shannon Maureen Campbell, D.O. (’06), Specialty Medicine Award; Dana C. Chukwuemeka, D.O. (’06), Obstetrics and Gynecology Award; Melissa Dawn Gasaway, D.O. (’06), Pediatrics Award; Sara Shonna Snyder, D.O. (’06), Geriatric Medicine/Gerontology Award-Ohio Department of Aging; Brian David Steinmetz, D.O. (’06), Social Medicine–Medical Humanities Award; and Jessica Lynn Price, D.O. (’06), Biomedical Science Award.

Receiving the Donna Moritsugu Award, which is given to a medical student’s spouse in recognition of his or her support, was Grant Grabill, the husband of Angela Grabill, D.O. (’06).

The Centers for Osteopathic Research and Education gave awards to 11 outstanding students at hospital sites. Award recipients were Jayme Lynn Rock-Willoughby, D.O. (’06), St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center; Allison M. Swank, D.O. (’06), Firelands Regional Medical Center; Jon Howard Baker Jr., D.O. (’06), St. John West Shore Hospital; Robert Lewis Beight, D.O. (’06); St. Joseph Health Center; Shivani Sharma, D.O. (’06), Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital; Christopher Michael Lloyd, D.O. (’06), South Pointe Hospital; Shannon Maureen Campbell, D.O. (’06), Doctors Hospital of Stark County; Michael David Paloski, D.O. (’06), Doctors Hospital of Columbus; Elexis Camille McBee, D.O. (’06), O’Bleness Memorial Hospital; Dalkeith Fitzlawson Tucker, D.O. (’06), Southern Ohio Medical Center; and Lindsay Marie Castle, D.O. (’06), Grandview Hospital and Medical Center.

Concluding the ceremony, Brose led the new osteopathic physicians in reciting the Osteopathic Oath. A reception followed in Baker Center.