President Owen’s 2008 Commencement Address

William F. Owen, Jr., MD
President, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Good morning, I am Dr. William Owen, President of UMDNJ. Welcome everyone. It is my great pleasure to preside over today’s celebration of extraordinary accomplishment by what is our largest graduating class of approximately 1,770 health professionals. Here, we will celebrate their years of persistent study, hard work, passion, and commitment.

On this unique day of accomplishment, first we must thank those who never doubted in your success. They first groomed you into wonderful compassionate people. Next, they helped shape the sort of life you wished to live. They helped to summon it up for you and to begin you to move toward it. And in turn, something magical happened. That life began moving towards you. Gifts of this sort that are uniquely special and loving deserve special recognition. Please give your family and loved ones a big round of applause. They celebrate in your inspiration and most importantly, your continued success.

I want to share a quiet secret. On some mornings, I awaken with a quiet unease. Sometimes I even feel a bit frightened. A lot is riding on decisions made by your professional generation. We are counting on you to help fix a health care delivery system that's leaving too many Americans sick, bankrupt or both. For many in our country who are afflicted with the maladies of our society, there seems to be little hope at their doorstep. Unlike your loved ones and family, there are some who almost seem to be working against you. They try to entice you by suggesting that your needs should supercede those of your patients; they ask that you be hurried and not to care; they want you to be sharp and smart but not worried about your patient’s lives but your own and your own problems.

However, I know that this is not you. Otherwise, why would you for example sit through classes learning to be humanistic -- to make people from other cultures feel comfortable with you? Why would you learn to recognize your own subconscious biases and in turn learn to rid yourself of them so that they cannot come to the surface?

Why would you lead clinics across this state providing free medical care to the poor? Why would you offer dental services to children born already disadvantaged by poverty and intellectual disability?

Why would you challenge your professors and me to do more to help more? Why would you be malcontent with what my generation has been able to do within our profession and openly say to us, “Do better”?

I look out at you and I am less frighteneded. I know our profession will be better and help make people’s lives better. I grew up in the Deep South when it was OK to be prejudiced. It was alright to fear and make fun of people who looked different, who worshipped on different days, or who pronounced their vowels differently.

Sometimes when I get frightened about America and my profession, I think back to those days and the people who I saw on TV who said, “This is not right.” We all know of the Marchers who fought off dogs and hoses and mean bully sheriffs. But we don’t talk about the health professionals who went against the norms of their peers by treating any man, woman or child. It may have been safer and smarter to follow the trends and just let things go. But they did not. They took a risk. And they changed their profession and so began to change the world.

So now when I get a bit frightened, I think it's someone elses turn to do what’s right. My generation of health professionals had our own challenges and at times we were frightened to face them. Some we managed but there are many others that we did not get right and have left for you. But I am reassured and bolstered that you will make things better. You will not be afraid to say, “I know what’s right because I am a doctor, a nurse, a physical therapist, a dentist, a scientist, a you fill in the blank.

Your professors tell me that you are ready to take great risks for what is right, to lead your respective profession and so make us all less frightened under a brighter day.

It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our spouse’s eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. Please live and make things better.

William F. Owen, Jr., M.D.
President