Med school alumni group sets new course
The Medical Graduates Society (MGS), to which all of Memorial's
medical alumni belong, has embarked on an invigorating course of activity.
"At the last meeting of the MGS at the school's 30th anniversary, we heard loud and clear from the alumni in attendance that they want the MGS to be a more visible and valuable entity in the lives of the medical school and its graduates," said MGS president Dr. Howard Strong. "Over the last few months, the current executive -- a mix of previous and new alumni -- has been developing several powerful initiatives that will serve our mission of supporting the medical school and its alumni."
One initiative is a new multi-function website for the MGS. Vice-president, Dr. David Keegan describes the new World Wide Web site as "very clean and easy to use with surprisingly useful functions. As a Memorial medschool graduate, you'll be able to locate colleagues around the world and post messages to your former classmates in class discussion groups."
Taking the lead from the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, the MGS is planning to launch a membership card for all alumni. "You've got to admit that nowadays with all the cards people throw at you and expect you to carry that you could end up with some sort of whiplash if you jumped off your wallet," says Dr. Bill Eaton, MGS secretary. This new card will have lots of space for you to record multiple membership and phone numbers, allowing you to skin out a few of those plastic menaces from your wallet."
Another innovation is in the way reunions are organized. "The MGS has always been the primary organizer of reunions and we've usually timed these with the anniversary of the medical school itself. This has met with some success, but now we've decided to centre this sort of celebration on the classes of graduates themselves," Dr. Strong says.
"From now on each year we will coordinate the reunions of the classes who would be 10 15, 20, and 25 years graduated at the same time. This will allow for a large formal dinner and coordinated CME that is both RCPSC and CFPC accredited. However, classes will still be able to put together individualized social events, if they so choose. This new model allows for balancing the planning power of a large group of alumni with the need many classes feel to have their own activities."
The Web site was launched on Valentine's Day, 1999 (a Valentine was sent to all alumni with a really funny cartoon by David Keegan and the Web adress). Check out the new MGS site at www.med.mun.ca/mgs
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