White Coat Ceremony Inducts New Medical Students
The Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine Class of 2029 students were honored Friday, Aug. 8, in the 2025 White Coat Ceremony at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Forty-four first-year medical students, who will train for all four years at Bethlehem-based Temple/St. Luke’s, donned their “doctor” coats for the first time. This rite-of-passage for all medical students signifies their transition from the study of undergraduate pre-clinical health sciences.
Among the participants were numerous “homegrown” medical students, such as Jennah Abdelaziz of Allentown. She said she is particularly interested in women’s health, and that she decided to become a doctor so that she could “contribute to communities that are underserved.”
Temple/St. Luke’s, the Lehigh Valley’s first and only medical school, is the only place in the region where aspiring doctors from the area can complete their training close to home. By educating future physicians like Abdelaziz, St. Luke’s is developing local medical talent that will nurture our region’s wellbeing into the future
“The White Coat Ceremony marks the beginning of a profound and lifelong commitment to the practice of medicine,” said Shaden Eldakar-Hein, MD, MS, FACP, Senior Associate Dean of the medical school. “It is our privilege to welcome this new class of students as they take their first step toward becoming the compassionate, skilled and dedicated physicians our communities need.
“On behalf of our faculty and administration, we look forward to guiding and supporting them as they grow into their roles as future healers.”
Abdelaziz graduated from Parkland High School and then attended Lehigh University, where she majored in Behavioral Neuroscience and co-authored a research abstract titled “Understanding the Phenotypic Consequences of Naturally Occurring Genetic Changes.”
Over the years, she became well acquainted with St. Luke’s, initially serving as a volunteer and later working as a patient care assistant. She said she came to understand that St. Luke’s was someplace special – someplace that she wanted “to learn from and contribute to one day.”
Thanks to generous donors who support endowed scholarships, all Temple/St. Luke’s students receive important scholarship funding during each of their four years of training. Abdelaziz said she is especially grateful for her scholarship since she is the first person in her family to pursue an advanced degree.
“It is tremendously helpful,” she said. “It eliminates some of the financial burden.”
About St. Luke’s
Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.
The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.
Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 50+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 500+ residents and fellows.
St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A’s from Leapfrog across all of its 11 acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.
Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy
