Photo: Rob Carlin
MD/PhD student Zach Dyer presented Kente and multicultural stoles to graduating UMass Chan Medical School students as part of the Deborah Harmon Hines, PhD, Commencement Celebration on Friday, May 30. It was the fifth consecutive year for the event created by Dyer and fellow MD/PhD student Abiola Ogunsola as a way to celebrate academic excellence and cultural pride. Kente fabric comes from Ghana, West Africa, and represents unity, belonging, renewal and prosperity.
“Sometimes you just can’t see how you’re possibly going to get to the end. Seeing people achieving their dreams, among their mentors, among their family, it was just so powerful for me to see that and to be able to say, ‘OK. I can do it. They’re doing it. I can do it, and we’re all supported together,’” said Dyer, who is headed to the Institute for Family Health in New York City for a family medicine residency after graduation.
“This evening reminds us that even in the most challenging times, we must make space for joy,” Marlina Duncan, EdD, vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion, said in her welcoming remarks.
Organized by the Diversity and Inclusion Office and the Inclusive Excellence Student Council, the event is named after Deborah Harmon Hines, PhD, retired vice provost for school services and professor of radiology and nursing. Dr. Hines established the Worcester Pipeline Collaborative with the Worcester Public Schools to increase the numbers of students from underrepresented groups and disadvantaged backgrounds entering careers in biotechnology, biomedical research and the health professions.
“It is very important that you keep your eyes on the future and what this world could be and what you can do to bring that world about,” Hines said via Zoom.
More than 30 students from the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and T.H. Chan School of Medicine were recognized, with a student from each school providing a reflection.
Kareem Nunnally-Rivera, a medical student in the Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health track who has matched in emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center, talked about his road to medical school, which included time as an engineer and a personal trainer. He spoke about how he discovered who he wanted to be as a physician while speaking to a patient in Spanish.
“I’ve been through the same situation that a lot of these patients have been through in the emergency department, which is where I’ll be and where I found my calling,” Nunnally-Rivera said.
Clevanne Julce, MPH, a PhD candidate in the Population Health Sciences Program who will be working as a postdoctoral researcher with her mentor, Nancy Byatt, DO, MS’15, MBA, professor of psychiatry, obstetrics & gynecology, and population & quantitative health sciences, spoke about her experiences as a first-generation Haitian American.
“Students of marginalized racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds don’t get the luxury of missteps. We don’t just get to be students at any given point in time,” Julce said, “We have to be someone’s financial and legal lifeline, the head of households, translators and always advocates. We’re often the bridges between our parents and the country determined to keep them on the margins. This program, my amazing cohort, this institution, has provided me the space to fall, the space to grieve, and most importantly, the rest when I needed it.”
Ayeh Tanteh, MSN’24, FNP-C, a Doctor of Nursing Practice student in the Family Nurse Practitioner Track and an acute care nurse at UMass Memorial Medical Center, taught children in Worcester Public Schools about nutrition and physical activity for her scholarly project.
“As health care providers, we’ve taken an oath. We are called not only to care, but to protect, to uplift and to fight for human dignity and for health,” Tanteh said. “Dr. Deborah Harmon Hines showed us exactly what that looks like in action. Her legacy teaches us that believing in justice isn’t enough. We must turn our belief into action.”
