OGDEN — Weber State University began the year with a new program and will end the year with a new tradition.

On Thursday, WSU will have its inaugural white coat ceremony to celebrate the university’s first cohort of 20 physician assistant students. The ceremony — hosted by the Department of Physician Assistant Medicine in the Dumke College of Health Professions — is set for 6-8 p.m. at the Ogden Eccles Conference Center in downtown Ogden.

Department Chair Sandra Stennett told the Standard-Examiner that the ceremony is a major benchmark in the education of a physician assistant, or PA.

“Our students have been through one year of didactic training — that’s all of the classroom training,” she said. “And at the end of that … they go from classroom experience and now they’re going to be going out into the community and working with preceptors who are either physicians or PAs to work clinically. The white coat, the whole thing about it is it symbolizes the students’ commitment to a high standard of patient care and it’s kind of a rite of passage.”

Stennett said that the 20 students who will be receiving their white coats Wednesday also will be the first PA students at WSU to do so.

“Medical schools and PA schools traditionally do white coat ceremonies,” she said. “We’re a brand new program. We started our first cohort of students in January of this year.”

Stennett said she’s proud that this group of students will be the first to participate in a white coat ceremony at the university.

“It’s been an amazing year with these students,” she said. “We have an amazing cohort of students who have made this better than we could’ve expected, and it’s an honor and a privilege to be able to have been their director for the last year. Weber State gave me the opportunity to start this program. It’s been kind of a dream come true and — because I have a great faculty who helps me do it — we’ve been able to put forth what my vision for a program would be and I think we’ve created something that we’re really proud of.”

She added that once the students get their white coats, the hard work really begins.

“They will have a little break and then they will come back and start going out on clinical rotations,” she said. “They’re pretty much full-time clinical practice next year. It’s kind of like a full-time job, but they will be students learning how to treat patients. … They’re very excited; it’s a big step and they’re nervous, of course. But we’ve got some great preceptors in the community — preceptors and PAs who are going to be working with our students — and we’re really excited about the rotations that they’re going to be going on.”

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