The leader of a forward surgical team in Afghanistan. A developer of tactile books for visually disabled children. A casting editor for Top Chef. An internationally acclaimed concert violinist. A software developer for a defense company.

These individuals and their classmates, a total of 144, whose experiences are just as diverse, participated in the White Coat Ceremony in the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theater on August 15, as members of the Class of 2018 of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The class was selected from a pool of 4,201 applicants, up from the previous years pool of 4090, according to Charles Severin, associate dean for medical education and admissions. It includes 126 residents of New York State and 18 from out of state. Thirty are UB graduates.

Most students majored in a scientific field but others majored in art history, accounting, performance studies, African and African American studies, anthropology and environmental studies, among others.

Some students have earned master's degrees in fields ranging from public health to business administration, from music to nutrition. The students have won an impressive array of awards, including Howard Hughes Medical Institute scholarships, the Merck Award for Scholastic Excellence, a Gates Millennium Scholarship from the United Negro College Fund, a National Institutes of Health Diversity Grant and memberships in Phi Beta Kappa.

Many have assisted in medical clinics in Haiti, Peru, Belize, Darfur, Uganda, Kenya, Cambodia, Ecuador and many other countries.

During the ceremonys Calling of the Class, students were called to the stage and presented with their coats, while their hometowns and undergraduate institutions were announced. Students received their coats from medical school administrators including Severin and Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the UB medical school, who gave the students his traditional counsel about the white coat: You have earned the right to wear it. Now you must earn the right to keep it.

The ceremony is the symbolic rite of passage shared by medical students across the U.S. to establish a psychological and unwritten ethical contract for professionalism and empathy in the practice of medicine. But it has a surprising history, according to the keynote address by Helen Cappuccino, assistant professor of surgery and assistant professor of oncology, Breast Surgery Division, Department of Surgical Oncology, at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and an alumna of the UB medical school.

She noted that until the latter part of the 19th century, physicians traditionally wore black to reflect the somber nature of their work.

In those days, she explained, calling a physician to a loved ones bedside was a prelude to death.

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Diverse student experiences are celebrated at medical school white coat ceremony for Class of 2018