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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