MD Graduates Celebrated at Jacobs’ 180th Commencement

By Keith Gillogly

Taking place at UB’s Center for the Arts on North Campus, the ceremony brought together the Class of 2026 graduates along with their families, friends, faculty supporters and more who all came to celebrate the milestone event.

The Jacobs School conferred MD degrees to 183 graduates, including three MD/MPH graduates, two MD/MBA graduates, one MD/PhD graduate, and one dual-degree MD/Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery graduate. 

UB President Satish K. Tripathi, PhD, welcomed the audience and congratulated the Class of 2026, highlighting their many achievements and opportunities ahead.

“As you mark the completion of your degree, you cross a new threshold of opportunity and responsibility. For that reason, we celebrate not only what you have accomplished, but who you have become,” Tripathi said.

Echoing that message, Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School, reflected on the Jacobs School’s 180-year history and its ongoing storied legacy. “Graduates, you’re now part of our legacy, you’re part of our 180th year of history. But you’re also the future,” she said.

The school was founded on a commitment to educating physicians ready to provide care, she said. “With profound change in academic medicine, that commitment has endured.”

Looking to the future, Brashear said one thing should remain constant: putting the patient first. “Wherever your path leads you, commit that each day you will put the patient first, that you will listen with intention and act with integrity. You will serve with humility,” she said. “If you can do that, you will become excellent physicians and trusted partners.”

At the ceremony, a SUNY Honorary Degree was presented to Mary McLean Wilson, a philanthropist, civic champion, and board chair and life trustee of the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, established by her late husband, the founder of the Buffalo Bills. 

Mary Wilson serves on the Jacobs School’s Dean’s Council and is a longtime supporter of the school. In accepting her honorary degree, she spoke of her husband’s respect for medicine. “It’s worth noting that Ralph referred to the Bills’ team of UB doctors as the most important players on the sidelines.”

She also encouraged the graduates to always believe in themselves and each other. “When people are believed in, they work harder, they think bigger, they accomplish more than they ever thought possible.”

In awarding the UB President’s Medal to Brashear, President Tripathi extolled her advancements in the field of neurology, visionary health sciences leadership, dedication to interdisciplinary research, and steadfast support for women in medicine.

First presented in 1990, the UB President’s Medal signifies extraordinary service to the university. It recognizes “outstanding scholarly or artistic achievements, humanitarian acts, contributions of time or treasure, exemplary leadership or any other major contribution to the development of the University at Buffalo and the quality of life in the UB community.”  

Keynote speaker Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, president-elect of the National Academy of Medicine, praised the graduates and their families and supporters for their shared dedication.

“You’re entering medicine at a moment of genuine scientific wonder,” she said. “You are the inheritors of the greatest run of technological and biomedical innovation in human history.”

But, she also pointed to a central challenge: the U.S. health care system is failing the people it’s meant to serve.

She noted that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation yet lags in outcomes. She cited high rates of chronic disease and preventable deaths, health disparities, and physicians’ crushing administrative burden.

Still, she encouraged the graduates to look to organizations like the National Institutes of Health, which expands scientific horizons, and the National Academy of Medicine, which seeks to keep medicine accountable.

She also offered a set of principles to confront these challenges, asking graduates to embrace public service, commit to collaboration, welcome being wrong, protect their own wellness, and build trust.

“Trust is the currency in medicine. It’s what makes a vulnerable patient tell you the truth,” she said. “Stay curious. Stay humble. Stay human. And take care of each other.”

The class speaker from the Class of 2026, Andrew David Gasper, led his fellow classmates through one last exercise.

“I’d like to ask you, fellow classmates, as future doctors, to take one last patient history as medical students.”

In this case, the patient was the Class of 2026 student body. Gasper then assessed onset, location, duration, associated symptoms, relieving factors, severity, and other measures akin to taking a patient history.

The four-year duration in Buffalo was “long enough to change us, but somehow short enough to feel like it flew by in an instant.” 

The aggravating factors like difficult exams and uncertainty and the associated symptoms like caffeine dependence posed challenges, but relieving factors like family support and times with friends carried everyone through, he said.

“Making our evaluation and diagnosis is clear: We have before us a compassionate, driven, and inspiring group of future physicians. The prognosis is excellent,” he said, before adding another thought.

“Though this condition does last a lifetime.”