Alpha Omega Alpha AOA

How to Contact Us

National Office
525 Middlefield Road, Suite 130
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Telephone: (650) 329-0291
Fax:(650) 329-1618

Mara Celebi
Records Administrator
m.celebi@alphaomegaalpha.org

Robert J. Glaser, M.D.
Editor Emeritus, The Pharos

Edward D. Harris Jr., M.D.
Executive Secretary and Editor of The Pharos
eharris@alphaomegaalpha.org

Ann Hill
Administrator
a.hill@alphaomegaalpha.org

Debbie Lancaster
Managing Editor of The Pharos
dlancaster@alphaomegaalpha.org

William F. Nichols
Assistant Treasurer

Carol Wong
Administrative Assistant
c.wong@alphaomegaalpha.org

How is AΩA organized?

A national office of six staff that includes the Executive Secretary and Treasurer of AΩA is located in Menlo Park, CA. The staff reports to a Board of Directors, fifteen in number including several students, which is responsible for development of all policies, constitutional changes, and funding mechanisms. The national office is linked to each chapter at member medical schools where a faculty member is designated by each school dean to supervise chapter activities and to assure that elections are done effectively and within constitutional guidelines. At present, only three medical schools (UC San Diego, University of Connecticut, Mayo Medical School) have never had a chapter of AΩA. Both Harvard and Stanford had chapters established in the early part of the last century, but chapters at both institutions have become inactive in the past twenty years.

Several schools with no active chapter have developed AΩA Associations formed of members (faculty or community physicians) elected previously at other schools. These Associations cannot elect students, but can elect residents, faculty, and alumni in numbers prescribed by the constitution. In addition, these Associations are eligible to request and receive funds from the national office to support the programs of the society that are open to all students at the school.

When a new medical school is founded and approved by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the Dean and faculty members elected previously at other institutions have the option to apply for AΩA chapter status. These requests are evaluated closely by the Executive Secretary and Board. A site visit to the applicant school by the Executive Secretary and a member of the Board will occur and a recommendation forwarded for full Board action.

How are new members of AΩA chosen?

The Constitution of AΩA gives many degrees of freedom to each chapter for the process of election of student members within certain firm guidelines. These can be summarized as follows:

At approximately 16 months before a given class will graduate from medical school, the Councilor must arrange with the dean’s office, with the students’ permission, to receive in confidence a list of the top quartile as measured by academic performance.
From this top quartile of students, each chapter may elect to AΩA membership up to one-sixth of the projected number of students that will graduate. The Councilor then invites members of AΩA in the faculty who know students and their performance in the classroom and in clerkships to meet in confidence to select students for membership. The chapter may elect up to half of that one-sixth of students in the spring of the third year, and the remainder at any time from the fall of the fourth year until graduation. There is wide variability in the process among chapters. Some elect no junior students, and several elect all student members in the spring of their senior year just prior to graduation.
Those students chosen from the top quartile for election are picked not only for their high academic standing, but as well for leadership among their peers, professionalism and a firm sense of ethics, promise of future success in medicine, and a commitment to service in the school and community. By adherence to these criteria it has happened that one or more of the highest ranked students by grade point average have not been elected to the society.
Each chapter may elect each year up to three residents/fellows to membership and one or two faculty members. These individuals are expected to be selected by a caucus of student members of the society at some time before the induction ceremony during the senior year. With input from faculty members and the office of the dean, one or two alumni/alumnae may be elected each year as well.

History

When William Webster Root and five other medical students at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago organized Alpha Omega Alpha in 1902, "excellence" was hardly the word that would describe American medical education.

Indeed, the founder viewed the society as a protest against "a condition which associated the name medical student with rowdyism, boorishness, immorality, and low educational ideals." Of the approximately 25,000 medical students in the United States at the turn of the century, no more than 15 percent were college graduates. The only requirement in most schools was a high school diploma or its equivalent; the latter often meaning the ability to pay the fee. The schools themselves—there were about 150—were by and large of dubious quality. In his landmark study of medical education in the United States and Canada, published in 1910, Abraham Flexner found so-called medical schools located in storefronts, tenements, and warehouses, their laboratory equipment consisting of a couple of microscopes, some moldy slides, and a lonely skeleton. With a few exceptions, notably the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, founded in 1893, the medical school curriculum consisted of a series of lectures, sometimes supplemented by demonstrations at the bedside or in the laboratory, if such existed.

William Webster Root These, then, were the circumstances under which Root and his fellow medical students met to form a society that would foster honesty and formulate higher ideals of scholastic achievement. Chartered in 1902 by the state of Illinois, Alpha Omega Alpha's growth has paralleled the development of American medical education. Within a decade after the society was founded, chapters were established at seventeen medical schools. At present there are 124 active chapters in the United States and Canada.

Today, when students and established physicians alike reject easy platitudes, the tenets of the society are more relevant than ever. As framed by Root, they are a modern interpretation of the Hippocratic oath:

"It is the duty of members to foster the scientific and philosophical features of the medical profession, to look beyond self to the welfare of the profession and of the public, to cultivate social mindedness, as well as individualistic attitude toward responsibilities, to show respect for colleagues, especially for elders and teachers, to foster research and in all ways to ennoble the profession of medicine and advance it in public opinion. It is equally a duty to avoid that which is unworthy, including the commercial spirit and all practices injurious to the welfare of patients, the public, or the profession."