Sept. 8, 2004
Med Students Log 1,000 Hours of Community Service
Entire Incoming Class of 2008 Spends Day Helping at
12 DC Locations
By Richard
Sheehe
Last years incoming class of medical students at GW adopted community
service as a principle, exacting a pledge from students to visit schools,
clinics and other places in the District to help with everything from
tutoring to weeding flower beds. So what was the theme for this years
crop of future doctors?
Roll up your sleeves and do the same.
Thanks to the mentorship role that second-year students are now playing
for the class of 2008, community service will remain a prominent theme.
To this end, a full day of the orientation schedule was devoted to a community
service outing. All 165 members of the class of 2008 fanned out across
the District to paint lockers, plant trees and generally clean up at 12
public schools.
Our class had a real focus on community service, and we wanted to
expose new students to this same idea, said Sarah Hill, a second-year
student who spent most of the summer working on this years orientation
schedule for her incoming classmates.
The whole idea of medicine is about helping other people, but incoming
students still have so much to learn about medicine itself, said
Brian Rudolph, another second-year student working as a mentor for the
class of 2008. Community service is a way for new students to learn,
right off the bat, the elements of teamwork and helping that will guide
them in medicine.
The spirit of community service obviously did not begin with the class
of 2007; GW medical students have long been active in the community. What
this class did was make it easier to get started. Its not
that students are not willing or dont want to help in the community,
said Rhonda Goldberg, associate dean for student affairs and education.
Its a question of finding a project.
The class of 2007 found a wealth of projects that this years incoming
class will no doubt be able to build on. Indeed, the pledge among students
last year was that each person complete at least four hours of community
service. By years end, the class of 2007 had racked up 10 times
that amount, with more than 10,000 total hours of community service performed
at numerous projects in clinics, shelters, community centers and schools
in the District. Some students even managed to do community service overseas.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
|
|
|