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Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

M.D. Program

 
The Billings Dome against a clear blue sky, as seen from between some treetops.
 

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
White Coat Ceremony

The School of Medicine and the Colleges Advisory Program actively support students in their transformational journey to becoming physicians, and the White Coat Ceremony marks an important milestone on this path. The presentation and cloaking of the white coat – a symbolic mantle of the medical profession – confers a commitment to the cherished values of being a physician: humanism, compassion, altruism, leadership, excellence and devotion to the well-being of others.

 

Class of 2026 White Coat Ceremony

The Class of 2026 White Coat Ceremony will take place on May 19, 2023 at 3pm.

Speaker Information

Watch the Livestream

 

 

Past Ceremonies

Statement of Values

The purpose of this Statement of Values is to outline principles that the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Class of 2025 will abide by during their medical training and throughout their careers.

Read the Values

History of the White Coat

A collection of white coats on hangers.

Today, the long white laboratory coat is an international symbol of the biomedical community. A century ago, the medical service changed drastically when leading physicians were expected to be both researchers and scientists. White coats were adopted to emphasize cleanliness and professionalism. The white coat was first worn by a new generation of physician-scientists.

The scientific revolution in medicine was a founding principle of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. William Welch, the first Chief of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, insisted that his trainees follow the scientific method in their research. At the same time, Sir William Osler, the first Physician-in-Chief, emphasized cleanliness in his historic textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine.

Did You Know?

A graduate student receives his white coat.

The first white coat ceremony occurred in 1993 at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Medical students received a short white coat to emphasize their years of training. In recent years, a number of medical colleges around the world began holding coating ceremonies for their terminal degree candidates, including those working towards their Doctor of Philosophy degree. At the heart of these ceremonies is the recitation of a student oath, a pledge to uphold the same values of integrity, professionalism, and scholarship that inspired the white coat 100 years ago. The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions use this occasion to mark the achievements of our doctoral candidates, and to charge them to remember the ideals upon which their scientific endeavors should stand.

Featured Guest Speaker Gregg L. Semenza, M.D., Ph.D.

Redonda G. Miller, M.D., M.B.A.

Dr. Semenza is the C. Michael Armstrong professor of genetic medicine, with appointments in pediatrics, radiation oncology, biological chemistry, medicine, and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He serves as founding director of the Vascular Program at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and founding director of the Armstrong Oxygen Biology Research Center.

Dr. Semenza received an A.B. (in Biology) from Harvard University and M.D. and Ph.D. (in Genetics) degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed pediatrics residency training at Duke University Medical Center and postdoctoral training in medical genetics at Johns Hopkins. He has been a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty since 1990.

Dr. Semenza’s lab discovered hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), a transcription factor that controls the expression of thousands of genes in response to changes in oxygen availability, for which he was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Semenza has also received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (2016), Lefoulon-Delalande Grand Prize from the Institut de France (2012), and the Canada Gairdner International Award (2010). He has authored more than 450 research articles and book chapters, and his work has been cited more than 180,000 times according to Google Scholar.

Dr. Semenza’s current research interests include investigating the molecular mechanisms of oxygen homeostasis, the role of HIF-1 in cancer progression, and the development of HIF inhibitors for cancer therapy.

Learn More about Dr. Semenza
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