CARBONDALE — Southern Illinois University School of Medicine welcomed its newest class of medical students Aug. 14, 2026, during a White Coat Ceremony in Shryock Auditorium on the Carbondale campus, where students received white coats to mark the start of their training and a commitment to professionalism and empathy in medicine.
Members of the Class of 2030 will spend their first year of training on the Carbondale campus and years two through four in Springfield. Eight students in the medical school’s Lincoln Scholars Program will complete most of their training downstate.
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Students from Southern Illinois in the class include Kendall Gates of Harrisburg; Breanna Gbadebo-Goyea, Rose Gomric, Grant Mussemann and Brianna Nichols of Belleville; Joseph Grabowski of Moro; Shivani Greene, Hannah Tae and Elaine Wei of Edwardsville; Vishal Jacob and Sam Kassab of O’Fallon; Lainey Kramer of Damiansville; Madilyn McLain of Benton; Alex Pritchett and Nicole Waller of Mascoutah; Drew Straub of Troy; and Sean Taylor of Carterville.
SIU Medicine Associate Dean for Student Affairs Haneme Idrizi, SIU System President Dan Mahony and Dean and Provost Jerry Kruse welcomed the students. Amanda Mulch, assistant dean for student affairs, read the students’ names as Kruse and Richard Austin, president of the School of Medicine’s Alumni Board of Governors, presented them with white coats on behalf of the Alumni Society.
Lincoln Scholars Program Director Jennifer Rose led the students in reading the Physician’s Pledge.
Educator Kelly Hurst used the pockets of the students’ new white coats as a metaphor for the habits and values they will carry into medicine. Drawing on the students’ reflections about what helps people feel seen and heard, Hurst urged them to pair the scientific knowledge and clinical skills they will acquire with communication, consent, humility, curiosity and respect, and to remember that every patient is a whole person.
“We will expect you to master the science and the medicine. But we will also hope for something more,” Hurst said. “We will hope that while you are learning what you need to know to care for the person in front of you, you are also deciding who you want to be when you meet them.”
She encouraged the students to become physicians who listen, explain, ask permission, remain open to correction and “wonder before judging.”
“Today, you receive the coat; the pockets come with it. What goes inside of them is entirely up to you. Choose carefully, because someday, you will walk down a hallway, toward a door … And on the other side will be a whole person,” Hurst said.
The White Coat Ceremony is held at most U.S. medical schools each fall. SIU School of Medicine, established in 1970, is based in Springfield and Carbondale and focused on the health care needs of downstate Illinois. It educates physicians to practice in Illinois communities and has graduated 3,388 physicians since its first class in 1975.
