FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, May 5, 2014
Contact: Leah C. Payne, Public Affairs Director, Schools of Medicine & Pharmacy, 304-691-1713 

Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine marks annual commencement

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Sixty-seven medical students will receive their Doctor of Medicine degrees Friday in the Investiture Ceremony of Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. The event is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center. 

Admission is by invitation.

Marshall University President Stephen J. Kopp, Ph.D., who is among the speakers, will confer the students’ degrees.   

Graduates of the Class of 2014 include 11 students who have maintained perfect 4.0 GPAs as well as six students who will continue their military service at military residency programs across the country. The students have matched into highly competitive residency specialties like dermatology, orthopedics and ophthalmology, as well as prestigious programs in primary care.

This year’s investiture speaker is Robert C. Gallo, M.D., co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.   Gallo, who since 1996 has served as the Director of Human Virology and Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is also credited with identifying the first human retrovirus and with others showed it was a cause of a particular form of human leukemia.

He has been awarded 31 honorary doctorates from universities around the world and will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree at the Marshall ceremony.

The investiture, which is being streamed live at www.marshall.edu/it/livestream, will also include recognition of graduates of Marshall’s Biomedical Sciences Program and the announcement of the School of Medicine Alumni Association’s Honorary Alumnus for 2014.

In addition to this ceremony, there will be a senior awards ceremony at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Erma Ora Byrd Clinical Center Auditorium.

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Date Posted: Thursday, May 8, 2014