White Coat Ceremony 2012 – Penn State College of Medicine

Students from the Penn State College of Medicine’s Class of 2016 officially began their medical careers last Friday with a White Coat Ceremony at the Hershey Lodge. During this annual rite of passage that included family and friends, 145 first-year medical students received their white coat from a distinguished faculty member and recited the Oath of Modern Hippocrates – the universally recognized creed for physicians. Students in this class represent twenty-five U.S. states and seven foreign countries.

The College of Medicine initiated its annual White Coat Ceremony in 1996 with funding support from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, a public foundation fostering humanism in medicine. A White Coat Ceremony or similar rite of passage takes place at more than ninety percent of schools of medicine and osteopathy in the United States.