School of Medicine students select Humanities, Bioethics Dean Faith Fitzgerald to deliver commencement address

Faith Fitzgerald, professor and assistant dean of Humanities and Bioethics at the UC Davis School of Medicine, will deliver this year's commencement address. The graduation ceremony begins at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 10, at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on the UC Davis campus.

Fitzgerald's talk is entitled “Wonderful,” and it will address the long legacy, duties, accomplishments and responsibilities of physicians.

As assistant dean of Humanities and Bioethics, Fitzgerald has helped build a medical humanities program at UC Davis. A primary goal has been to incorporate both the humanities and bioethics into the curriculum throughout medical school and as part of life-long learning.

Fitzgerald is widely recognized as an inspiring educator and an expert diagnostician whose skills have been tapped to determine Wolfgang Mozart's cause of death. She graduated from the UC San Francisco School of Medicine in 1969 and completed her residency and chief residency there. At UC Davis, she was appointed the Internal Medicine program director in 1985 and became assistant dean in 1999. She has written on protean disease states, medical education, physical diagnosis and bioethics. She was recently elected to a three-year term on the board of regents for the American College of Physicians, the nation's largest medical society.

The School of Medicine will award 93 doctor of medicine degrees and 14 master's degrees in public health at the ceremony and announce the recipients of the student and faculty awards for distinguished teaching and overall excellence in education and research. These include:

• School of Medicine Medal, presented to the student with the highest academic performance in the class

• Golden Goblet Award, given to a member of the graduating class, who in the opinion of fellow classmates, best and most consistently demonstrates joy and commitment of selflessness and service to others

• John C. J. Tupper Prize for Excellence in Teaching

• Kaiser Foundation Awards for Excellence in Teaching

• Loren D. Carlson Student Research Awards