GSBS recognizes 56 doctoral candidates in virtual ceremony

In a year when education rituals were up-ended by the COVID-19 pandemic, 56 Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences doctoral candidates were honored virtually in a qualifying exam recognition ceremony streamed over Zoom and on Facebook Live on Monday, Sept. 14.

“This is the essential milestone that our community has chosen to celebrate, as it marks the successful transition from student to scholar,” said GSBS Dean Mary Ellen Lane.

Passing the qualifying exam is a significant milestone for PhD students, marking their transition from classroom-based learning to dissertation research as formal candidates for doctoral degrees. 

Despite the new format, the traditions and values shared in the recognition ceremony remained strong.

The newest doctoral candidates were symbolically, if not yet directly, given engraved laser pointers and business cards, a tradition dating to 2013.

Dean Lane explained the significance of these items instead of a lab coat.

“The symbolic value of the laser pointer derives from its use in one of the essential components of scholarship, namely the dissemination of knowledge,” she said.

“And while the culture of business card exchange varies with field and venue, the cards themselves are an explicit symbol of your identity as an emerging scholar and your affiliation with one of the best biomedical research institutions in the world.”

Further, she added, a lab coat would not be an inclusive symbol for the GSBS community because not everyone works in a lab.

“We all had an involuntary lesson in the importance of work done outside of the laboratory this spring,” she said. “And even now that those of you who work in labs are back on site, the distancing requirements and safety standards that we will be adhering to for the foreseeable future are profoundly changing the culture of scientific work.”

Lane recounted how operating differently has brought about adaptation that, while stressful at times, would improve the practice of science, from creating new academic testing formats, to working more efficiently, to being innovative in fostering inclusion and connection, to sharing data with unprecedented speed.

“Not all of us are working directly on understanding or mitigating the pandemic,” she said, “but this foundational shift in the manner and the pace at which scientific information is shared, validated and ultimately established as scientific fact will reverberate in all areas of investigation.”

She called on the doctoral candidates to remember their public obligation to not only add content to the body of scientific knowledge, but like the laser pointers that bear their names, to also illuminate.

Chancellor Michael F. Collins and Executive Deputy Chancellor, Provost and School of Medicine Dean Terence R. Flotte also emphasized the importance of civic engagement among scientists.

“Each of you represents rays of hope and streaks of promise,” Chancellor Collins said. “Now more than ever we need fact, not fiction; we need hope, not hate; we need science, not sensationalism.”

Dean Flotte called on the doctoral candidates to stay true to the principles of science in turbulent times: “That is the essence of your commitment to science: to follow the data; to commit to the truth that the data reveals, no matter where it may lead you.”

Watch a full video of the ceremony here.

The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences recognized the following students who were admitted to doctoral candidacy in academic year 2019/2020: