Dr. Anil Puri

Dear MCG Family,

We have all found ourselves living in unprecedented and uncertain times over the last two years, watching as COVID-19 wreaked havoc in this country and across the world, closing some health care facilities in the short term and stealing the lives of not just our patients, but of our families and our friends.

During that time, I often paused to reflect on the privilege it is to be a physician — to be the trusted caregiver for my patients in times of crisis and times of calm. I am thankful that the Medical College of Georgia has afforded me that privilege.

As the pandemic has waned and the numbers of COVID cases have diminished, I have also been spending time thinking about all we have lost — not just the lives of so many, but precious times with those we love, times we will never get back.

Now, more than ever, it feels so important to carve out time, a scarce commodity in our so often busy lives, to spend with our friends and family.

That includes our MCG family.

There will be many opportunities for us to gather again over the next year — at events like regional receptions, welcome dinners for new students, White Coat and Hooding Ceremonies and class reunions during Alumni Weekend. Please do not take those times for granted. Come and spend time with your fellow MCG alumni – it is a group that has always been so supportive and encouraging to me.

As one of my first official duties as Alumni Association president, I had the honor of welcoming our newest colleagues — the Class of 2022 — into the MCG Alumni Association at their Hooding Ceremony in May. As I told them then, I look forward to paying it forward during my term and ensuring that they, the next generation remains in touch and engaged with their medical school.

I hope you will join me.

My best to all of you,

Anil Puri, MD, Class of 2005

Internal Medicine & Pulmonary/Critical Care/Sleep Medicine, Milledgeville, Georgia

 


2022 Distinguished Alumni

Photo of Dr. William Brooks

Dr. William Brooks

'67

2022 Distinguished Alumnus, Professional Achievement

After graduating from MCG, Brooks completed a family medicine residency at The Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon. After practicing in nearby Eatonton for six years, he moved his practice to south Macon, in one of the city’s most underserved areas, in 1975.

He has since served The Medical Center in a variety of roles, including on its Executive Committee from 1979-89 and as its chief of staff in 1985.

Brooks has been active in the Medical Association of Georgia since he started practicing medicine in 1969. He joined the MAG Board of Directors in 1992 and has served in a variety of leadership roles, including second vice president, first vice president and treasurer. In 2010, the association honored him with its Joseph P. Bailey Jr., M.D., Physician Distinguished Service Award.

He has been a member of the Bibb County Medical Society Board of Directors since 1982 and served as its president in 1993. In 2008, he received that group’s Distinguished Service Award.

Brooks has been an active member of the MCG Alumni Association, including serving as president from 2009-10.

Photo of Dr. Stephen Clements

Dr. Stephen Clements

'66

2022 Distinguished Alumnus for Professional Achievement

Clements completed his internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital. He then joined the US Army Medical Corps, eventually earning the Army Commendation Medal for Meritorious Service.

He joined the faculty at Emory in 1973 and has taught medical students there ever since. He also has served as the director of the Andreas Gruentzig Outpatient Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and of the Echocardiography Laboratory at Emory University Hospital.

In 2011, Emory recognized him with the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Award, for his transformational contributions to the hospital. The O. Wayne Rollins Foundation also honored his many contributions to clinical care, prevention and discovery in cardiovascular disease in 2018 by establishing the Stephen D. Clements, Jr. Chair in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Clements has been an active member of the American Heart Association, including serving as president of its Georgia Chapter from 1992-93. In 2007, the American College of Cardiology named Clements the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Photo of Dr. Natasha Savage

Dr. Natasha Savage

'07

2022 Outstanding Young Alumna

In addition to being the senior associate dean of graduate medical education and designated institutional official, Savage, a 2007 MCG graduate, also is vice chair for academic affairs in the MCG Department of Pathology. She also is chief of staff-elect at AU Health.

As vice chair, she oversees the department’s academic endeavors, engaging residents in scholarly pursuits, advising medical students who are pursuing a career in pathology and helping build the pathology and hematology parts of MCG’s curriculum. As chief of staff-elect, she chairs the Credentials Committee, which oversees the credentialing of practitioners and works with the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee to grant specific privileges to practice medicine in AU Health facilities.

She also is the health system’s medical director of hematology and hematopathology, overseeing the hematology, bone marrow, flow cytometry and hemostasis labs at AU Medical Center and the Children’s Hospital of Georgia.

She is a member of the College of American Pathologists, serving as the group’s commissioner for the State of Georgia and as the immediate past vice chair of its Hematology/Clinical Microscopy Committee. An honored educator, she has received multiple MCG Exemplary Teaching Awards for Undergraduate Medical Education and now serves as co-councilor for the medical school’s chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Savage completed her anatomic and clinical pathology residency in 2011 at MCG. She completed a fellowship in hematopathology at Stanford University before returning to the faculty of her alma mater in 2012.

Photo of Dr. Leslie Lamar Wilkes

Dr. Leslie Lamar Wilkes

'65

Honored Posthumously as a Distinguished Alumnus

After graduating from MCG Wilkes completed a year of surgery residency at Charlotte Memorial Hospital before receiving a commission in the US Navy. He went on to spend a year as ship surgeon aboard the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. After his release from active duty, he completed his orthopaedic residency at Wake Forest University and completed a yearlong fellowship in arthritis surgery at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

He began his orthopaedic practice in Savannah in 1972 and practiced there for more than 40 years. He was the first surgeon in Savannah to perform a modern hip replacement and one of the first in the state to perform arthroscopic knee surgery.

Wilkes was active in the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the British Orthopaedic Association, the Society of Hip and Knee Surgeons and the Arthroscopic Surgery Society of North America. He served on the board of the Georgia Medical Care Foundation for more than 30 years, including a term as president from 1997-99.

He remained committed to MCG throughout his career, serving has adjunct faculty and in the medical school’s Alumni Association, including as president in 1996. He also was committed to medical education throughout his career and organized a group of former American Edinburgh Fellows into the Edinburgh Orthopedic Club, a group the sponsored a Scottish registrar’s visit to the United States each year to attend the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting. For many years, he also invited medical students from Scotland’s University of Glasgow to study with him in Savannah.

He was named Savannah’s Best Doctor numerous times and the Georgia Medical Society awarded him with their Health Care Hero Award in 2010 and their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Wilkes passed away April 4, 2020 in Savannah.

 

2023 Match Day

Match Day 2023
Match Day 2023
Match Day 2023
Match Day 2023
Match Day 2023
Match Day 2023

 


Dr. Robert Jadick

I just showed up

For Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall, who in March was lying in a hospital bed in Kyiv, Ukraine, with multiple severe injuries, the grizzled man with the salt and pepper hair had to be one of the most beautiful sights he’d ever seen.

That man was Dr. Richard Jadick, who’d just driven 12 hours past multiple Ukrainian and Russian checkpoints on a rescue mission organized by Save Our Allies. 

I just showed up
Robin Boineau

Lifelong Learner

Today, she’s the director of a National Institutes of Health office, but there was a time when Robin Boineau, ’90, wasn’t sure she’d even get into medical school.

Lifelong Learner

Contact Us

MCG Office of Alumni Affairs

MCG Office of Alumni Affairs
1120 15th Street, PERS100
Augusta, GA 30912

706-737-1759

mcgalumni@augusta.edu

MCG Alumni Facebook

Flickr Alumni Albums

Worth a Thousand Words

Media Gallery     Class of 2025 Stethoscope Presentation

Our alumni get together all over the world at chapter events, networking forums, career conversations and awards ceremonies. See if you recognize anyone in these photos or videos!

Match Day 2023

2023 Match Day

2023 Match Day
Class of 2026 White coat Ceremony

White Coat Ceremony - Class of 2026

White Coat Ceremony - Class of 2026
2022 Hooding photos

MCG Hooding 2022

MCG Hooding 2022
2022 Match Day

2022 Match Day

2022 Match Day
2021 Hooding ceremony

MCG Hooding 2021

MCG Hooding 2021
2021 Match Day

2021 MCG Match Day

2021 MCG Match Day
2021 Raft Debate

2021 Raft Debate

2021 Raft Debate
Class of 2025 White Coat Ceremony

White Coat Ceremony - Class of 2025

White Coat Ceremony - Class of 2025

Stethoscopes for First-Year Students

MCG freshman class given stethoscopes
two med students trying out their newly gifted stethoscopes
three medical students smile and pose with their new gifted stethoscopes

You should have recently received a letter regarding the MCG Stethoscope Program that provides a MCG branded stethoscope to first-year medical students.

Due to dozens of donations from alumni, faculty and friends, the Medical College of Georgia Alumni Association has been able to provide stethoscopes for every freshman medical student and we hope to do the same for every incoming freshman class. For many medical students, receiving their first stethoscope is the first tangible sign that their dream of becoming a physician is coming true. The response from our future colleagues has been overwhelming appreciation and gratitude.

This is an amazing opportunity to impact a students’ life at the beginning of this special journey to becoming a physician.

What better way to welcome our future colleagues, than providing them with MCG branded stethoscopes, accompanied by a note of encouragement from you, to symbolize the bond you both will always share with MCG.

Please click below to impact an MCG student’s life forever. Stethoscopes are $250 each.

 

MCG Foundation - Stethoscopes for Freshmen

Recent News

Learn more about our global network of alumni and the impact they are making on the world.

Sessions, ’55, Atlanta anesthesiologist died March 1

March 07, 2023

George P. Sessions, MD, a 1955 MCG graduate who guided the establishment of the departments of anesthesia at three Atlanta hospitals, died March 1, 2023. Read Dr. Sessions obituary. Read more about Dr. Sessions’ special bond with 2021 MCG graduate Dr. Kristina Hazim.

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Duncan, ’80, Augusta hand surgeon, died Jan. 7

January 17, 2023

Dr. J. Wendell Duncan, a 1980 MCG graduate and hand surgeon, died Jan. 7. Read more about Dr. Duncan.

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Busey, ’57, died Jan. 7

January 17, 2023

Dr. Thomas Jesse Busey Jr., a 1957 MCG graduate who served as president of the Georgia State Board of Medical Examiners, died Jan. 7. Read Dr. Busey’s obituary.

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Galphin, ’58, pulmonologist, sleep specialist, died Dec. 31

January 17, 2023

Dr. Robert Galphin, a 1958 graduate who was instrumental as Lexington Medical Center expanded and became one of the most extensive care facilities in the state, and was a founding partner of Pulmonary Associates of Carolina, died Dec. 31. Read Dr. Galphin’s obituary.

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Walker, ’67, retired radiologist, died Dec. 25

January 17, 2023

Dr. Robert Walker, a 1967 MCG graduate and retired Atlanta radiologist who worked at Northside Hospital, Windy Hill Hospital and Kennestone Hospital where he served as chief of staff, died Dec. 25. Read Dr. Walker’s obituary.

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Hester, ’70, died Dec. 28

January 06, 2023

Dr. Jesse Hester, a 1970 MCG graduate and retired OB/GYN, died Dec. 28. Dr. Hester was graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1970. He moved his family to Macon, GA, to work at the Medical Center of Central Georgia to complete his four-year internship and residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Upon completion of […]

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