Welcome to the new website of the AOA Gamma Chapter of the Keck School of Medicine of USC! As the presidents of the 2010 graduating class, we are thrilled to announce the changes we have envisioned for the society. To begin, we realized that many people fail to recognize AOA as a community service organization. The class of 2010 feels that membership is much more important than just the honor of induction. We wanted to increase our presence on the campus, and we wanted to use the reputation of AOA to serve the people who surround us. Our vision for service is threefold. As medical students, we have a duty to our classmates and the future classes of the Keck School of Medicine. As Angeleans, we have a responsibility to serve Southern California. As human beings in an era of global conscience, we are responsible to serve people in need throughout the world. Thus, we envisioned a community service committee with three facets: one to promote wellbeing in our local community at Keck, one to serve Southern California, and one with the benefit of the world at heart. Our community service committee has worked diligently to increase the service of our society in a variety of service projects that are enumerated on the Community Service webpage, including academic and logistic assistance for future classes, a local beach clean-up, and funding for Haitians in need in the aftermath of the earthquake this winter. We are very proud that the leaders in our community who are a part of AOA have had such enthusiasm for serving their three communities.
AOA at the Keck School of Medicine has undergone recent change to eliminate two elections per class; thus, there is no longer the distinction between “junior” and “senior” AOA. Nominations this year were announced in August. While it is rightly believed that this allows for a greater degree of fairness in nominations, allowing all students to finish their third year requirements prior to selection of members, this presents us with a unique challenge in that all members in August were new to the society. There has been a break in continuity of the society, with the graduating members leaving in May and the new members becoming a group three months later. Thus, we are interested in increasing continuity between classes in several ways. First, our class (thanks to Co-President Philippe Champagne) has constructed a website to serve as a route of communication. This not only allows us to pass information from one graduating class to the next, but also permits communication between current members and alumni. Our goal is to create a space for alumni members and pre-graduate members to share ideas and foster communication. We would love for alumni members to join us at our annual banquet or our community service events. We would also like to build an alumni database so that we can communicate more personally with our members. Our current alumni contact information is grossly outdated and does not permit electronic communication with over 95% of our membership. You can help us out greatly by updating your contact information and providing a current email address, as paper mailings to the entire group are costly and we would rather use our funds to serve the needy in our three communities of focus.
As we reflect on the goals we had at the beginning of the year, we realize that we were, indeed, fulfilling the spirit of the motto of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society: “Be worthy to serve the suffering.” With aims of greater service to the community, we are very proud of the vision and of our current members to make the Gamma Chapter an organization known for service.
Please take the time to Register with us and consider a donation.
Philippe Champagne and Alexis Dixon
Co-Presidents, Class of 2010
Gamma Chapter, Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society