Welcome from Dr. James Rourke, Dean of Medicine
Dear Alumnus:
Welcome and thank you for your invaluable support. I enjoyed meeting many of our alumni at this summer's Medical Graduates’ Reunion.
As graduates of our Medical School, you are our sustaining strength, our ambassadors. You represent us to your patients, to your colleagues and to the community. It is your quality of caring and your achievements as role model, teacher, researcher and leader that give Memorial's Faculty of Medicine its stature nationally and internationally.
Memorial-trained physicians lead the country in the percentage that practice in rural areas, and the Family Practice Residency Training Program has won national recognition for its success. In St. John’s, over 50 per cent of the physicians at Eastern Health are Memorial graduates; at the Medical School itself more than 50 per cent of faculty members are MUN grads.
The Faculty of Medicine is on the brink of expansion and will experience tremendous growth in the next decade, both in education and research. With the construction of a new six-storey building adjacent to the Health Sciences Centre, there will be room for the expansion of the medical education program that will allow us to admit an additional 20 students from Newfoundland and Labrador to our class starting in 2012. This means we will admit a total of 80 new medical students each year.
As construction of the new building proceeds, other equally important changes are taking place that are integral to expanding our capacity for medical education. The Rural Clinical School Medical Education Network (RCSMEN), headed up by assistant dean Dr. Mohamed Ravalia, will strengthen and develop our strong tradition of rural medical education.
The new building will also house space for the expansion of genetics and genomics research. The work of the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Human Genetics will mean improved health for our province’s communities and communities around the world affected by genetic disease.
As our graduate community grows and prospers, we rely on you not only as ambassadors in the world, but also as contributors to the Medical School in ways that ensure an energetic academic environment. We would like you to help “Build a Healthy TomorrowTM.” We hope that each and every alumnus will contribute financially, whether it is to support the Thousand Thousands Campaign, the Medical Research Fund, the student contingency fund or to establish scholarships, bursaries or other directed giving. We also hope you will participate in other ways, including: raising MUN's profile in your community, developing and supporting alumni groups and perhaps starting innovative approaches to support the Medical School.
Please continue to choose us as one of your selected charities and keep in touch with us through this website. I wish you all the best in the coming year.
Sincerely,
James Rourke