News
NYITCOM Kicks Off 40th Anniversary Celebration
October 7, 2016
NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) kicked off a year-long celebration of its 40th anniversary with a gala alumni event at Disneyland in California.
More than 100 alumni and guests joined NYITCOM leaders and faculty members to mark the beginning of the festivities. The kick off coincided with the nation’s largest gathering of osteopathic physicians and students, known as OMED 2016.
“Based on our successful history of educating more than 7,000 physicians, NYITCOM is poised to advance new programs and initiatives to improve medical education and provide transformative experiences for the doctors of tomorrow, which is supported by exciting research,” said Dean Wolfgang Gilliar, D.O.
Bruce Levitt (D.O. ’82), who attended the event, fondly remembers being one of the graduates of NYITCOM’s second class. “My favorite memory was meeting my wife, Lois Kroplick (D.O. ’82), in the osteopathic principles lab,” said Levitt. “Her first words to me were, ‘God, your hands are cold!’”
Kroplick, a psychiatrist, is one of the first women to graduate from NYITCOM. Levitt, an internist practicing in New City, N.Y., said the school had a major impact on the field of osteopathic medicine, particularly within the state.
“NYITCOM has changed the whole face of osteopathic medicine in New York,” he said, in part because of the large number of graduates who began working, year after year, in hospitals and institutions. Their growing presence helped people recognize that osteopathic physicians are fully licensed and work in all specialty areas as their MD, or allopathic, counterparts.
“I used to get questions all the time: What is a doctor of osteopathic medicine? Can you prescribe drugs?” Levitt recalled. “I never get those questions now. NYITCOM really put osteopathic medicine on the map here.”
Over the next 12 months, NYITCOM will hold special alumni events, lectures, and a sports medicine conference. The first Murray Goldstein Founders Lecture, named for one of NYITCOM’s founders—an internationally known expert on cerebrovascular disorders, will be held early next year on the Old Westbury campus. The celebration will culminate with a gala at NYIT de Seversky Mansion in September 2017.
