The newest members of the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the MD Class of 2030, arrived on campus July 30 for three days of orientation, meeting classmates, faculty, and school leaders as they prepare to start their medical education.
The orientation opened with icebreaker activities and a welcome from Andrew W. Artenstein, MD, MBA, interim vice president for health affairs and dean at GW SMHS. Academic deans from the Foggy Bottom and Regional Medical campuses also introduced themselves and the people who will support the students throughout medical school.
“We’re really happy to see you,” Artenstein told the incoming class. “I can tell you it’s a real shot in the arm to see fresh faces, enthusiasm, people entering the profession at the very beginning here.”
Rhonda Goldberg, MA ’77, associate dean for student affairs and education, encouraged students to look around the room and start getting to know the people sitting beside them.
“Your new best friend is in this room, maybe two, three, or four that you will grow with, learn with, and when you graduate from medical school you'll keep in touch with forever,” she said.
She shared a story from earlier that morning about a student who arrived at the Ross Hall courtyard, saw the sign welcoming the new medical students, and paused to take in the moment.
The student, she said, “saw everyone standing there welcoming them and he stood there and quietly whispered, ‘yes.’ I hope you all felt that way, because that’s how excited we are to have you here.”
Laura Green, MD, assistant dean for student affairs at the GW Regional Medical Campus at LifeBridge Health and clinical professor of ophthalmology, asked students to pause and think about why they had chosen medicine and how they felt at the start of the journey.
She encouraged them to save those thoughts in their phones as a “little time capsule.”
“That is a gift to your future self,” she told them. “When you’re feeling stressed out, when you’re wondering, ‘should I really have done this,’ when you're in a stressed-out kind of stage a few months from now or a few years from now.”
That note, she said, can “give you something you can reflect back on that will help propel you forward in those moments of stress that you have in the future.”
The orientation also relied on students who had already been through much of the adjustment themselves. Members of the Class of 2029 Lillian Wilson, Jake Hoskins, and Jan Kasal served as orientation co-chairs, helping plan activities and pair incoming students with members of their class.
“We want to make sure that we’re providing a welcoming environment for all the new students. Help them get to know each other, help them get know us, people that they can look to if they ever need help,” Wilson said.
The team took an analytical approach, matching students according to specialty interests, extracurricular activities, social preferences, and academic or fitness interests. They also used the data to select “big and little” pairings between students in the Class of 2029 and the incoming class, to serve as mentors for the incoming students.
Wilson said the process gave the organizers a chance to get to know both groups of students.
“That was something that for me was really special, just getting a bit more insight into everyone both in our class and the new class, [selecting] who we think would go well together, and just helping the new students get acclimated.”
For Hoskins, getting the orientation ready meant coordinating with facilities and operations and recruiting volunteers, while making room for both paperwork and activities.
Over the three-day orientation, students participated in team-building competitions at locations across GW and on the National Mall, toured campus and Himmelfarb Library, and visited GW Hospital. They also received iPads and were fitted for their white coats.
MD Class of 2030 at a Glance
The MD Class of 2030 is settling into life at GW, arriving at the Foggy Bottom campus from 22 states and bringing a wide range of experiences with them. They emerged from one of the school’s most competitive admissions cycles, with faculty reviewing more than 15,000 applications and conducting 679 interviews before making the final selection.
Women make up 52% of the class. Students range in age from 20 to 28, with an average age of 23. The new arrivals attended colleges and universities across the country, with the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, Georgetown, Boston University, William & Mary, and Washington University in St. Louis among the larger sources of incoming students.
Many are already familiar with GW. The new class includes 13 GW undergraduates, one GW MPH alumnus, and a graduate of GW’s post-baccalaureate pre-medical program.
Science and research experience are common among the class, but their interests stretch well beyond the lab. There are notable exceptions, including students who majored in comparative literature, French, and economics. Most incoming students arrive with science-related undergraduate degrees or significant research experience, and 31 have already published work in research journals such as Neurosurgery, Frontiers in Immunology, Journal of Cell Biology, and Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The class also brings plenty of experience outside the classroom. Nineteen students served as EMTs before medical school. Others include Division I athletes, former youth-sports coaches, certified scuba divers, musicians, dancers, a DJ, an audiobook narrator, a former college mascot, and a second-degree Taekwondo black belt.
