University of the Pacific School of Dentistry - Chips Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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A LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT. Students of the College of Physicians and Surgeons :- I feel highly honored, I assure you, for the compliment paid me in dedicating this year's Chips to me. To each and every member of the student body I send greetings. I often wish I possessed a memory like that of Julius Ceasar or Napoleon so that I could greet you severally by name. I-Iowever, I can assure you that I have a strong personal interest in our students, whether graduates or undergraduates. In such a publication as the Chips we cannot and ought not to take ourselves too seriously, this is no place for speeches or sermons. Yet it may not be out of place for me to offer a few words of Commendation for the work done by the students of the College of Physicians and Surgeons during the past year. In the character of the work done and in the general eleva- tion in tone there has been a marked advance over former years. This is not meant as a criticism of previous years' work, simply as indicating that in the growth and development of our college, each year is expected to show improvement over preceding years. I venture to say that this progress is especially marked in the greater number of students than formerly who have come to realize that they are here for a definite purpose instead of passing away their time in frivolity, only studying sufficiently to pass their examinations. I-ligher standards of medical education, and higher prelimi- nary requirements have done much towards eliminating those whose hearts and souls are not in their work. Students who now enter college for a medical education are more mature than in past years, they now realize that they have before them four years of arduous mental work when every minute must count.. It is this class of students that furnish our safe and sane physicians, those whom no one can have the least fear to call to the bedside of his dear ones. Looking back over the past sixteen years of our history, during all of which time I have been most intimately connected

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Dedicated By the Student .fBoa'y to Our Tresident Dr. William Freeman Southarci In recognition of his services

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with the college, participating in all its activities, its trials and its successes, we can take pardonable pride I think in the general high average which our graduates have attained in their chosen profession. They are proving their worth wherever they may be located, whether in city or country, from British Columbia to San Diego, and from the coast to Utah, Nevada and Arizona, on ship and on land. We have no cause to feel ashamed of our Alumni, they are doing their work faithfully, and rapidly taking leading positions in the communities where they live. To continue our work, to maintain a first-class medical school on independent lines, which has always been our aim, requires the undivided loyalty of our teachers, students and alumni. The Alumni in particular should be a power in sustaining and supporting the trustees and teaching body in their efforts to produce results We have a first-class corps of teachers who represent the live, active, progressive members of the medical profession,whose hearts are in their work. We have a full equipment of apparatus to which we are con- stantly making additions. Yet it is, after all, the stimulus which the student gets from his teachers that urges him on to higher endeavors. To those who feel that opposition to our school which has so long continued must finally seriously injure our progress, let me hasten to assure them that full recognition will finally come if we are true to our higher ideals and are faithful in our daily tasks. Success is based on strict adherence to duty. All suc- cesses come through battling against opposition and standing up to our ideals. The whole question of advance in medical educa- tion is based on a desire to keep abreast of the progress made in laboratory investigations. There does seem, however, to be an idea on the part of some enthusiastic educators that radical changes in methods can be formulated and put into instant practice. Let us not forget that progress is through evolution, not revolution. W. F. SOUTHARD.