School of Medicine Welcomes MD Class of 2029 at Traditional White Coat Ceremony | BU Today

At Monday’s annual White Coat Ceremony welcoming this year’s 139 first-year medical students to the first step of their training at Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, keynote speaker Rod Hochman (CAS’79, CAMED’79) reflected on donning his white coat for the first time 50 years ago.

“If you’d asked me back then what my career would look like, I would have been mostly wrong,” said Hochman, CEO emeritus of Providence Health & Services, who along with his wife, Nancy (Sargent’77,’83), recently gifted BU $10 million to build the new Rod Hochman Family Clinical Skills & Simulation Center. They had previously established the Rod Hochman Family Scholarship Fund supporting medical students.

“There are easier [career] paths—business, finance, consulting—but none will offer the kind of fulfillment that comes from a life spent healing, listening, and making a difference,” he told the entering students.

During the ceremony, held on Talbot Green and organized by the medical school’s Student Affairs office, faculty helped the new medical students put on the iconic white coat of a physician, emblematic of the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next.

“Donning the white coat symbolizes your entry and commitment to the professional expectations, responsibilities and obligations of becoming a doctor,” said Hee-Young Park, dean ad interim of the medical school.

Angela Jackson, associate dean of student affairs at the medical school, told students the ceremony is “visible evidence you are joining this profession, taking your first steps along the path to a demanding but rewarding and meaningful career in medicine.” 

This year’s class, which was drawn from 11,483 applicants, is the 177th in the school’s history, noted Kristen Hanssen, associate dean of admissions for the medical school. Students hail from 32 states and 17 countries, speak 28 different languages, and range in age from 20 to 34.

Their personal stories are just as varied. For William Wang (ENG’14, CAMED’24,’29), medical school wasn’t always a certainty. His parents immigrated from China and worked long days at their restaurant. Wang helped there after school and on weekends and holidays.

The family was poor and had to travel long distances to get affordable healthcare. The experience fueled Wang’s desire to become a physician.

The restaurant faltered soon after Wang graduated from BU with a degree in biomedical engineering.

“At the time, I thought if I went to medical school, I wouldn’t be able to help the family, I’d just accumulate more debt,” he said.

After working at a private equity firm for several years, his family finances had improved, and Wang returned to BU, earning a master’s degree in medical sciences from the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine last year. And now, at 33, is pursuing his dream of becoming a doctor. 

Hellen Edwards always had a medical career in mind, but other opportunities cropped up. For financial and personal reasons, the Hawaii native joined Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a freshman chemistry major at BU. Now 34 and an Air Force major, Edwards (CAS’14, CAMED’29) is returning to BU with 10 years active duty behind her, including postings in Montana, Okinawa, and Washington, D.C., where she led monitoring efforts related to biological threats and weapons of mass destruction.

“That desire to practice medicine never really left me,” Edwards said. “After all these other experiences I came back to medicine and serving people. That’s where my heart is.”

A lifelong gymnast, Alma Kuc has learned to be resilient, but that was tested in January 2025 when her family home burned to the ground in Los Angeles’ Palisades fire. Kuc (CAMED’29) knows all about getting back up after you’ve been knocked down. A member of the Polish national gymnastics team and an All-American at UC Berkeley who competed in two world championships, Kuc saw her share of success, but also failure.

“I’ve become resilient, and gymnastics has helped with that because you fall a lot and you just have to keep on going,” Kuc said. Her injuries piled up and required four major surgeries that involved long rehabs, which helped convince her to enter medical school and become a physician.

Amarachi “Amy” Opara knows firsthand what a debilitating disease does to a child and their family. From a young age, and continuing through high school and college, Opara (CAMED’29) assumed a large role with helping to care for her younger sister who has cerebral palsy and other developmental issues while her mother—a pharmacist originally from Nigeria—worked long hours to support the family.

“It’s what brought me to medicine,” Opara said. “It all stems from growing up with a sister with special needs.”

For Eric Yang, it was the unexpected illness and death of two mentors in his formative years that propelled him into a medical career. A gifted clarinetist, Yang (CAMED’29) was devastated by the death from cancer of a teacher who had shepherded him into a prestigious precollege music program at the Juilliard School in New York. When a second mentor was forced into early retirement by dementia, Yang shifted his focus away from a future career in music and towards his growing interest in biomedical science.

“I wanted answers to questions like, ‘Why were they taken away from me?’” Yang said. At the University of Pennsylvania, he majored in neuroscience followed by two years as a clinical research coordinator at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he developed an interest in gene therapies for leukodystrophies.

“The best way to understand the newest developments in rare diseases is to be directly involved,” said Yang, who intends to continue research in medical school.