Close to 100 nursing students, most in their sophomore year, filed into Kendall Hall on November 14, each wearing a white scrub shirt and blue scrub pants and with a white lab coat draped across their forearm. They were there to celebrate a rite of passage, the White Coat Ceremony, which marks their transition into clinical rotations, which will start in the spring semester.

One by one, the students stepped onto the stage, and as their name was called, they handed their coat to a faculty member who, in turn, cloaked them.

“It is a special moment because it is their first professional passage to being a nurse,” says Carole Kenner, dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences. “It is when students feel they are really nursing students and will be providing clinical care.”

For Mia Conners ’27, the importance of it all hit her when she was on stage. “This was the next step in my journey. I am about to deal with real patients and not just mannequins,” she says. “I’m here, and ready.”

A tradition established in 1993 by The Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the White Coat Ceremony is meant to initiate healthcare students into a community of caring and to emphasize humanism in the field.

“Putting on the white coat, I realized, this is who I want to be,” says Jedd Mercado ’27. “This is what I am going to do. It was surreal.”

Donned in their new white coats, the 93 students stood and took an oath together. Among other things, the group pledged to approach the profession with integrity and humility and to always place patients as their foremost consideration.

“Taking this oath will make me a better nurse because it holds me to high standards and reminds me who I am doing this all for — my patients,” says Laura Young ’27.

Suzanne McCotter, interim provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, thanked the students for entering the field. “We are at a time when we need you desperately. The state of New Jersey needs you, our families need you, our community needs you,” she said. “We can’t wait to see the next stage of your success.”

— Kara Pothier MAT ’08