(Visit our album on Facebook for more photos from Boston)

To the School of Medicine Family:

I spent the past weekend in Boston at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting, this year titled Learn Serve Lead 2017. Accompanied by Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson and many of your fellow School of Medicine faculty, students, alumni, staff and administrators, I could not have been more proud.

Here in Detroit, it is clear that 2017 has been a transformational year for our medical school and university. Our presence, leadership and involvement at the AAMC meeting illustrated our strength to a national audience and showed that our School of Medicine is a continuously rising force in medical education, research, care and service.

Here are just a few ways our Warrior community participated at the AAMC meeting:

• President Wilson took on his leadership role as AAMC Board of Directors chair at the meeting.

• A number of School of Medicine medical education representatives attended the meeting and a number of its plenary sessions, learning best practices and positioning our institution as a model for medical education innovation in the coming years.

• At the AAMC awards ceremony, the School of Medicine officially was named one of only three institutions nationwide selected as finalists for the Spencer Foreman Award for Community Service. (We also received this distinguished honor in 2014.)

• Our School of Medicine reception honoring Dr. Wilson was one of the best attended receptions at the AAMC on Saturday evening, welcoming alumni, friends and leaders from across the country.

• More than 15 faculty and students gave presentations at the annual meeting, ranging in subjects from "Well-being in the GME learning environment" (Tsveti Markova, M.D.) to "Evaluating medical students' perception of how clinical experience in an Arab-American clinic can influence medical education" (A. Al-Awadi, K. Etheer, S. Edriss and J. Mendez) and much more.

• We also had a greatly expanded brand presence throughout the meeting via prominent promotional placements, such as the first table at the AAMC Minority Recruitment Fair, and a number of videos and materials in key locations.

Our vision is to graduate a diverse group of physicians and biomedical scientists who will transform the promise of equal health care into a reality for all. During the past year, we've made monumental strides toward realizing this vision. We're changing the way we operate, educate, engage with one another and innovate solutions. We're doing so thanks to a growing Warrior spirit and the knowledge and recognition of our need to continuously learn, serve and lead.

Thank you to those who so positively represented the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Boston, and thank you to the entire School of Medicine community for your continued and heightened dedication, spirit and enthusiasm. You play a crucial role in this institution's success and in the improved health of our communities.

Thank you for all you do.

Jack D. Sobel, M.D.
Dean
Distinguished Professor
Wayne State University School of Medicine