Effective April 5, 2025, Jan K. Carney, M.D., M.P.H., has been named president-elect of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest medical specialty organization and second-largest physician group in the United States. ACP membership includes 161,000 internal medicine physicians, related subspecialists, and medical students in more than 172 countries worldwide.

Carney is associate dean for public health and health policy, professor of medicine, and chief of the Division of Public Health, Department of Medicine, Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. She completed medical school at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and a residency in internal medicine at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, where she also held the role of chief resident. She earned a master of public health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Preventive Medicine (Public Health and General Preventive Medicine).

A Fellow of the American College of Physicians since 2003, in 2019 Carney was elected to Mastership in recognition of outstanding and extraordinary career accomplishments and notable contributions to medicine. Prior to serving on ACP’s board of regents since 2021, she was governor of ACP’s Vermont chapter from 2015 to 2019; in addition, she has been a member of multiple ACP committees, including patient partnership in healthcare, health and public policy, membership, credentials, and ethics, professionalism, and human rights, which she currently chairs.

“It is an incredible honor to serve the American College of Physicians,” Carney said. “The ACP’s internal medicine specialists and subspecialists promote health care excellence and professionalism in medicine, and advocate tirelessly for policies to improve health. As an internal medicine physician with expertise in public health and preventive medicine, I look forward to my role and contributing to ACP’s efforts to help patients and improve health in our society.”

2014 Olympic snowboarder Ty Walker of the Larner medical Class of 2025 was featured as a panelist at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies (VCET) Female Founders Speaker Series March 24 at Hotel Vermont. The panel of three women athletes—Walker, 2008 Olympic weightlifter Carissa Gordon Gump, and 2012 Olympic beach volleyball player Jennifer Kessy—discussed “the Olympian mindset” and how they applied this mindset to their entrepreneurial journey after the Games.

“Our conversation touched on perseverance, resilience, confidence, respect for others, and community. I really enjoyed hearing from the other panelists and thought it was a well-timed reflection, as I reach the end of medical school, on how qualities are cultivated,” Walker said.

Walker competed for the United States at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Later that year, she won the first-ever World Cup for Women’s Big Air snowboarding, an event that made its debut in the 2018 Winter Olympics. She still holds the record as being the youngest Red Bull–sponsored athlete in history. Walker graduated from Brown University in 2020 and will receive her M.D. from the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont in May 2025, after which she will begin her residency in internal medicine at the UVM Medical Center.

Since 2016, the non-profit Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies (VCET) Female Founders Speaker Series has served as a platform for entrepreneurs from across Vermont and elsewhere to tell their stories and share what it takes to start a company from the ground up, in order to inspire the business owners and female founders of tomorrow.

For National Public Health Week, the April 10 episode of the University of Vermont’s Across the Fence program features Thomas Griffin, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Public Health at the Larner College of Medicine. During the first full week of April each year, the American Public Health Association brings together communities across the United States to observe National Public Health Week as a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improve our nation's health.

“With public health, I really think of Ps that I want to drive home: population, prevention, policy, and protection,” Griffin said.

Across the Fence host Joleil Whitney boiled down the complex and many-faceted value of public health to a single, simple sentence in her introduction to the episode: “From vaccination programs and disease eradication to seat belts and increased helmet use, public health is public good,” she said.

Across the Fence is a daily 15-minute television program co-produced by UVM Extension and WCAX-TV informing viewers about activities being conducted by University of Vermont faculty, staff, and students that benefit viewers and their communities. The longest running farm, home, and community television program in the country, Across the Fence airs weekdays at 12:15 p.m. on WCAX-TV Channel 3.

Watch Dr. Griffin on Across the Fence

At KidSafe Collaborative’s 36th annual Outstanding Service Awards, held April 16 at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Rebecca Bell, M.D., received the Gregory Packan Children’s Advocacy Award, given to an individual who has advocated strongly and diligently on behalf of child / youth victims of abuse and neglect. Bell is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Larner College of Medicine and a pediatric critical care physician at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital.

KidSafe Collaborative is a partnership of more than 30 agencies, organizations, and individuals working together to prevent and address child abuse and neglect in our community. Each year, KidSafe honors a number of outstanding individuals and groups who have made a significant contribution to improving the safety and welfare of children in Chittenden County.

Leila Amiri, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and associate dean for admissions at the Larner College of Medicine, has been awarded the Northeast Group on Student Affairs (NEGSA) Outstanding Service Award for her exceptional leadership, mentorship, and dedication to the medical education community. The award was presented at the NEGEA / NEGSA / NEOSR joint conference April 9–11, 2025, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

As the NEGSA Committee on Admissions representative, Amiri has played a key role in shaping fair and equitable admissions policies. Her leadership extends nationally as chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Student Affairs (GSA) Professional Development Initiative, where she has fostered growth and development among student affairs professionals, and as chair of the AAMC B.A. / M.D. Affiliate Group, where she has provided invaluable guidance for combined degree programs.

Beyond these roles, Amiri’s service on the AAMC Advancing Holistic Review Committee, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) Advisory Committee, and the AMCAS Admissions Processing Solution Implementation Advisory Committee highlights her influence in improving medical school admissions practices.

“I am deeply honored to receive the NEGSA Outstanding Service Award and sincerely grateful for this recognition of my work within the medical education community,” Amiri said. “This award reflects the collaborative efforts and shared vision of all those who have worked alongside me.”

The Larner College of Medicine’s graduate programs were again recognized in the  2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings. In its latest edition of Best Graduate Schools, U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine in these categories: 

• Medical-Primary Care: Tier 2 
• Medical-Research: Tier 2 

“Placement in these top tiers again this year affirms the excellence our college brings in both primary care and research,” said Richard L. Page, M.D., dean of the Larner College of Medicine. “Working together, our outstanding faculty and staff assure that our students will be prepared to pursue their professional calling, from rural health to specialty care and biomedical research.”

For both lists, medical schools are presented in evaluative tiers in lieu of ordinal rankings. According to U.S. News & World Report methodology, each school’s tier was derived from its overall score, calculated by summing the weighted normalized values generated across several factors of academic quality. There are four tiers, with tier 1 medical schools being the highest-performing and tier 4 the lowest-performing. The Larner College of Medicine shares this designation with other highly regarded medical institutions.

Recently, the University of Vermont joined the ranks of the nation’s top research institutions by achieving an R1 Research Activity Designation, a recognition reserved for universities with the highest levels of research activity as designated by the prestigious Carnegie Classification, a program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching administered by the American Council on Education.

Effective April 15, 2025, Stephen Everse, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry, has been appointed associate dean for undergraduate and graduate education and postdoctoral training at the Larner College of Medicine, succeeding Chris Berger, Ph.D., who had served in this role since 2020.

Everse earned his Ph.D. in chemistry and completed post-doctoral work in the structure of fibrinogen fragments at the University of California–San Diego (UCSD). He joined the Larner faculty in 1998 as an assistant professor of biochemistry. 

He currently serves on the UVM Faculty Senate and volunteers at all levels: department, college, and university. He has participated in many governing bodies, including the Biochemistry Graduate Studies Committee and the Faculty Senate Curricular Affairs Committee. Additionally, he has been the Larner director for the undergraduate biochemistry program since 2015 and served on the Active Learning Task Force and the Teaching Academy Advisory Council.

At Larner, Everse has been involved in nearly every aspect of education in his field, from teaching, curriculum development, and mentoring undergraduate and predoctoral students to research and other scholarly activities. As an educator, he has been instrumental in providing strategies for developing programs that emphasize campus-wide participation. He has presented his work at the regional, national, and international levels and received numerous accolades and honors throughout his career, including the 2023–24 UVM President’s Distinguished University Citizenship and Service Award, the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of Chemistry at UCSD, and the Wyeth-Ayerst Scholar Award from the American Society of Hematology.