The 113 graduates in the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Class of 2015 – who received their medical degrees on May 17 in Ira Allen Chapel – will be contributing to reducing significant physician shortages, including a number of whom have matched to a family medicine residency, an accomplishment recently recognized by Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Board. (View the Commencement video here.)

According to a report released earlier this year by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the shortfall of U.S. physicians is projected to be as high as 31,000 primary care providers and 67,000 non-primary care providers, including medical specialists, surgical specialists and other specialists.

Benjamin Clements is a soon-to-be UVM Medical Center family medicine resident, but that wasn’t his original aim in 2004, when he graduated from Bates College with an English degree. A type 1 diabetes diagnosis dashed his plans to serve in the Peace Corps, but led to positions working with diabetes patients – for special children’s camps in Ecuador and at Boston’s Joslin Diabetes Center – which pushed him in the direction of medicine. “The further I got into this field, the more I knew I needed to understand,” says Clements, who then completed post-baccalaureate premedical studies at Harvard Extension School and came to UVM, located in his wife’s hometown of Burlington. He originally wanted to become an endocrinologist, “but as I progressed through the curriculum, I cared for patients without diabetes and what I really enjoyed was the privilege of being invited by patients to help them solve complicated and sensitive problems and the relationships and the collaboration between patients and doctors." After completing his Family Medicine clerkship, he says he was “hooked.” Clements just received a very special early graduation present: the birth of his first child on May 13. 

It’s been thirty-four years since Peter Wingfield started on his quest to become a doctor. The process started per normal expectations: premedical studies at Brasenose College, Oxford and attending St. Bartholomew’s Medical College in London. But something happened just prior to completing his training – his love of the stage won out and he left medicine to pursue a 20+-year acting career. On May 17, 2015, the Cardiff, Wales native known best for his role as Methos in the 1990s “Highlander” television series received his medical degree as a member of the University of Vermont College of Medicine’s Class of 2015 and delivered the student keynote address at the ceremony.

Other members of the Class of 2015 include:

• Sarah Gardner, a native of Sharon, Vt., has served as Student Council president at the UVM College of Medicine. As Class Marshal at Commencement, she led her classmates into Ira Allen Chapel and onto the stage to receive their medical degrees. She will be serving a pediatrics residency through the McGaw Medical Center at Northwestern University based at the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Get a glimpse of Gardner readying for her role at Commencement in this video.

• Amanda Peel, a native of Augusta, Ga., and her fiancé and Class of ’15’ classmate Calvin Kagan, of Seal Beach, Calif., matched as a couple to an internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. They will squeeze a wedding in between getting their M.D.s and starting residency in late June. Hear more from Peel in this Match Day “On the Interview Trail” video.

At the UVM College of Medicine ceremony, Dean Frederick C. Morin III, M.D., and Stephen Leffler, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at UVM Medical Center and UVM professor of surgery, provided welcomes. In addition, UVM President Tom Sullivan, J.D., provided remarks followed by a Commencement address from 1985 UVM College of Medicine alumnus Vito Imbasciani, M.D., urologic surgeon and director of government relations at Southern California Permanente Medical Group and a retired colonel, medical corps, U.S. Army. Imbasciani was recognized by President Obama as a source of inspiration for his 2010 repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Additional presenters include Russell Tracy, Ph.D., senior associate dean for research, who recognized graduate degree recipients, Associate Dean for Students Christa Zehle, M.D., and a student address by Wingfield.

Among the College of Medicine’s emeriti and retiring faculty members are John Burke, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and molecular genetics emeritus; Karen Burke, M.D., associate professor of family medicine emeritus; Riley Elliot, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology emeritus; Roger Foster, M.D., professor of surgery emeritus; Naomi Fukagawa, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine emerita; Neil Hyman, M.D., professor of surgery emeritus; Ray Keller, M.D., associate professor of surgery emeritus; Thomas Kristiansen, M.D., associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation; Muyao Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine; and Susan Lowey, Ph.D., professor of molecular physiology and biophysics emerita.

In addition to the medical degrees that were conferred at the ceremony, 10 students who earned a Ph.D. and six students who earned an M.S. degree from the College of Medicine were hooded at the Graduate College’s ceremony on Saturday, May 16.

View the full list of residency appointments for the Class of 2015 medical degree graduates. See the Commencement photo gallery.