Ankit Patel
Ankit Patel, a first-year MD-PhD student, was elected Weill Cornell Student Overseer during elections held April 3-10. As the student representative, Patel will be recognized as a full member of the Board of Overseers for a three-year term, as well as hold ex officio memberships on the Medical Student Executive Committee (MSEC) and the Graduate Student Executive Committee (GSEC).
The student overseer is unique in several ways. The three-year length of the term is significantly longer than the one-year positions on MSEC or GSEC. The student overseer is also the lone individual charged with representing both the Graduate School and the Medical College at the Overseers' meetings.
"The relevance of the position is to get to know everybody at Weill Cornell-students, faculty, administrators and overseers-and to work with those groups to further the students' interests," said Joe Habboushe, the outgoing student overseer.
The position also offers unique opportunities. "Not only are you treated as a full Board member, but the student overseer is also invited to give a presentation at each meeting, which not all overseers are offered," Habboushe said.
During his term, Habboushe put this opportunity to use, perhaps most visibly, by using the presentations to help establish Pyramid Coffee, a food vendor offering snacks and gourmet coffees, in Archbold Commons Student Lounge. Additionally, Habboushe helped design the M.D./M.B.A. program as well as the Business in Medicine Program, which features lectures from leaders in health-care industries and an elective course that places students at internships within health-care companies. A few of Habboushe's other efforts include connecting the New York and Qatar locations as a student liaison, securing substantial funding for student-initiated projects such as the Free Clinic, and more recently giving input to focus Weill Cornell's next capital campaign on more support for teaching faculty as well as possible decreases in the cost of tuition.
This year's student overseer election also differed in format. For the first time, students could vote online, allowing the Medical College's Qatar location to be included in the process. Representatives from the WCMC-Q student government submitted questions for the debate and all WCMC-Q medical students were eligible to vote.
Because of the multifaceted organization of the Medical College and its affiliated institutions, outreach is one of the principal responsibilities of the student overseer, and the position includes responsibilities on the Faculty and Student Affairs Committee and the Affiliations, Government Relations and Community Affairs Committee.
Patel, whose experience includes a term as president of Cornell University's honor society as an undergraduate, has made outreach one of the goals of his term, specifically with his alma mater.
"Our medical and graduate schools are not in direct connection with an adjacent undergraduate campus, making it difficult to generate certain opportunities for our students," Patel said. "I hope that by strengthening the relationship between the New York City and Ithaca campuses we can generate some of these opportunities."
Patel plans to increase support for community-based organizations, and as a Tri-Institutional MD-PhD student, Patel also hopes to strengthen the relationship between the Graduate School and Medical College. "I'm honored to have been chosen as the student representative on the Board of Overseers and plan to work tirelessly with the administration to assure the students' voice is heard," Patel said.
Photo by Weill Cornell Art & Photo.