Last week, ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine welcomed 79 medical students in the Class of 2025, the largest class in the medical school’s history, during an orientation week that culminated with a traditional White Coat Ceremony.
“Despite the challenges of the pandemic, which prevented in-person visits and shifted our admissions process to online interviews, we received more applications and conducted more interviews than ever before in the history of Quillen College of Medicine,” said Doug Taylor, associate dean for Admissions and Records at Quillen.
The White Coat ceremony was established in 1993 by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and was the brainchild of Gold, who believed that medical students should be introduced to the white coat and what it represents as they enter medical school, rather than when they exit, which had been the case historically.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s White Coat Ceremony for the Class of 2024 was cancelled. Therefore, Quillen held a separate White Coat Ceremony earlier last week for the Class of 2024. Both ceremonies were held in ETSU’s new Martin Center for the Arts.