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I NEWS
Office of Health Professions Celebrates
40th Year With Homecoming Breakfast
BY ADD SEYMOUR JR.
MOREHOUSE HAS EONG produced health professionals such
as former National Medical Association president Dr. Edward
Mazique ’33; Dr. Rene M.F. Charles ’32, the former chief medical
officer at Trinidad’s B.W.I. Medical Center; and, of course, for
mer U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher ’63.
But over the past two decades, the numbers of health profes
sionals produced by the College has fallen.
Addressing that issue is one of the reasons that the Thomas J.
Blocker Soc^ty and the Office of Health Professions will celebrate
the Office’s 40th anniversary this weekend. While tire 40th anniver
sary is a milestone, it is also an opportunity for health professions
alumni to find out that the office is looking for their involvement
“We are looking to really re-engage with alumni who have
been out of contact with the Office of Health Professions and who
have a vested interest in trying to carry out this crusade helping to
develop health professionals,” said Ajit Samarasinghe, director of
the Office of Health Professions.
The Office of Health Professions was created in 1974 with
federal funds allowing the College to focus on developing black
health care professionals during a time when there was little diver
sity in the field. Morehouse became one of the nation’s leaders
in encouraging, mentoring, educating and developing black male
physicians such as Dr. B.K. Edmund ’85, a Baltimore anesthe
siologist who heads the Thomas J. Blocker Society, a group of
Morehouse alumni health professionals.
“What happened over the years is a shift in funding, at least
at the federal level, away from the health professions, towards sci
ence, technolog)', engineering and mathematics, but within the
context of research and no longer funding to support the profes
sional degree,” Samarasinghe said.
Saturday morning at 8 a.m. at Paschal’s Restaurant near
campus, a homecoming 40th anniversary celebration breakfast,
“Why We Can’t Wait” will be held. OH P and the Thomas J.
Blocker Society will announce its “40 for 40” initiative to raise
$40,000 in honor of the office’s anniversary.
The breakfast’s other purpose, Samarasinghe said, is that
alumni in health professions can talk with current students about
their shared experiences.
“Very important to us is this mentoring component, which
involves a variety of things, such as alumni providing opportuni
ties for students to shadow them locally or when students are in
other cities during school breaks,” he said. “We do twice-a-month
meetings where the full body of pre-health students are assembled
in one place, so alumni can participate by coming by. Because we
have a cadre of alumni at different stages of their careers, they’re
folks who can talk effectively about medical school, graduating
from medical school, matching and residencies and even post
medical careers. So we’re talking about opportunities to bring
brothers together.”
Idle breakfast also will feature an address by Dr. Ronald
Copeland, Kaiser Permante’s senior vice president of National
Diversity Inclusion Policy and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.
Also, the winners of the student essay contest, “Why We
Can’t Wait; Redefining the Relevance of Today’s Office of Health
Professions,” will be announced.
Admission is free to the breakfast For information, contact
the Office of Health Professions at (404) 653-7862 or by email at
ajit.samarasinghe@morehouse.edu. ■
INSIDE MOREHOUSE, OCTOBER 2014
^ BestColleges.com
Morehouse No. 1
HBCU in Nation
Morehouse has been named the nation’s top
HBCU by BestColleges.com, an online resource
for prospective college students that helps them
make an educated choice about their future.
Using its established rankings methodology-
-which include data points for acceptance,
enrollment retention and graduation rates-
-BestColleges.com assessed the merits of all 104
HBCUs and created a list of the 30 best.
HERE ARE THE TOP 10:
Morehouse College
Howard University
Fisk University
Florida A&M University
Spelman College
Tuskegee University
North Carolina A&M State University
Xavier University of Louisiana
Winston-Salem State University
Tougaloo College
Running for a Cause
The 15th Annual Breast Cancer Awareness Walk drew the events largest crowd
ever-including President John Silvanus Wilson Jr. 79 (3rd from left), members from
Morehouse Naval ROTC and the Morehouse basketball team.
“10+15+25” Challenges the Campus Community
to Collectively Lose Two Tons by June
BY ADD SEYMOUR JR.
HEAD TENNIS COACH Terry Alexander’s faculty
and staff afternoon tennis workouts are known
across campus to be, well, hard.
“I know everybody isn’t going to come out
there to play tennis with me,” Alexander, a 2005
graduate, said with a smile.
But he wants to see the entire Morehouse
community get into better shape.
Alexander has come up with the “10 +15+25”
Challenge to get everyone on campus working out,
as part of the “A Pathway Forward” initiative.
A Pathway Forward is a framework for
shared governance, giving faculty and staff an
opportunity to participate in decision-making and
what things the College will focus on and how
those goals are achieved.
“The object is to work out three times a
week - one workout for 10 minutes, another for
15 minutes and a third for 25 minutes,” he said.
“And the object is for us—the entire campus—to
lose two tons.”
That’s right Two tons. But if everybody shares
the load, that’s only about two pounds per person.
Faculty, staff and students will be asked to
register, free of charge, on a soon-to-be-available
web link. Participants would then log their prog
ress each week by going to the link.
Seminars and workshops will be offered, as
will opportunities to work out with others. And if
someone wants to workout alone, workout DVDs
will be available for checkout from Alexander’s
office in Archer Hall.
The hope, Alexander said, is that collec
tively the campus will lose a total of two tons by
June.
“I always look for different programs that I
can get started to help our people to get into better
situations, health-wise,” he said. “It comes from
seeing that not only are some faculty and staff out
of shape, but also seeing a number of students
who aren’t in shape.”
Chief of Staff Karen Miller said Alexander’s
project is part of a larger campus wellness effort,
“Better Me, Better We,” that came out of conver
sations with faculty and staff who wanted to make
Morehouse a healthier campus.
Alexander points out that it all can make for
a less costly campus, also.
“We’re hoping it transitions into a monetary
thing because if we are healthier as a faculty and
staff, I’m hoping that for the insurance companies
will it translates into lower premiums,” he said.
“We’d go to the doctor less and that would mean
lower costs for the insurance carrier.”
Alexander credits colleagues Dionne Polite,
Cliff Russell, Claude Hutto, Leslie Williams and
Winn Walker for helping to put the entire project
together. I