Black History Consortium honors MUSC president, students

The Black History Intercollegiate Consortium honored MUSC President David Cole, M.D., FACS, with its Martin Luther King Jr. Award and recognized an MUSC student group, the Alliance for Hispanic Health, with its Student Leadership Award. The event was held Jan. 17 on the campus of Charleston Southern University in North Charleston.

The BHIC was founded in 1988 by MUSC’s then-director of Minority Affairs, Earl B. Higgins, as a way to celebrate both Black History Month and the legacy of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Higgins proposed a partnership between area colleges and universities to include Charleston Southern, Trident Technical College, The Citadel and the Medical University of South Carolina.

This year’s other MLK award winners included Mary Thornley, Ph.D., president of Trident Tech; Roberta Black, a student intervention coordinator and professor of journalism and political science at Charleston Southern; and Charles D. Foster, the first African-American graduate of The Citadel, who was recognized posthumously. In addition to MUSC’s Alliance for Hispanic Health, Trident’s Roneisha Rogers, Charleston Southern’s Keenan Woodward and The Citadel’s Ra’Shaud Graham won student leadership awards.

 MUSC student Prescilla Burgess read a tribute to King’s legacy, calling him “one of the most important moral voices of the civil rights movement."

“As an advocate for civil disobedience,” she explained, “King helped produce the most dramatic social change in America since the Emancipation Proclamation. A partner with unlikely partners, he led a revolution. A scholar and a minister, he found ways to unite the country and its leaders around one common belief: All men — and women — are created equal.”

King gave voice to those left out of the American dream, Burgess said, and challenged “systems that denied everyday folks, particularly black folks, equality.”

MUSC College of Pharmacy student Nicole Lyde presented the Student Leadership Award to the Alliance for Hispanic Health. “Between 1965 and 1968, Dr. King shifted his focus to economic justice,” she said. “His work during these years culminated in the Poor People’s Campaign, a broad effort to assemble a multiracial coalition to advocate for economic change. In 1966, Dr. King publicly spoke about health care injustice, calling health care injustice the most shocking and inhumane form of injustice.”

She said the Alliance for Hispanic Health had embraced King’s call for service in addressing health care inequity in meaningful and impactful ways.

Founded in 2004, the group consists of MUSC students, staff and faculty. Its mission is to provide a forum for collaboration to address the health needs of the Hispanic community in Charleston, including health care services, cultural awareness, student needs and recruitment and research.

To date, the alliance has hosted 156 meetings to educate the public about health care disparities, and every year, the group sponsors approximately 15 outreach projects that include free health screenings, school supply and clothing drives and community baby showers for the underserved. Since the group’s founding, its members have volunteered nearly 5,000 hours and served more than 8,000 members of the Hispanic community.

MUSC College of Nursing student Allye Prather presented the Martin Luther King Jr. Award to President Cole. “It’s a privilege to introduce Dr. Cole,” she said. “You can read all about his exemplary professional career, but that doesn’t begin to demonstrate who he is as a servant-leader or why he was selected as this year’s recipient.  In just 2-1/2 short years under his leadership, there has been an unprecedented commitment to making MUSC an academic health care institution where everyone is welcome and feels a genuine sense of belonging.”

Cole said the recognition was truly humbling, his voice breaking for a moment as the emotion overwhelmed him. “Dr. King was one of history’s most transformational leaders, and one of his strengths as a leader was that he kept his values front and center. To my eye, there’s no better leader than one who leads from the heart, with values as his or her compass. It doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes, but it does ensure your decisions are grounded in something meaningful.”

He shared with the audience that MUSC’s core values are compassion, collaboration, respect, integrity and innovation. “I’d like to focus tonight on respect. Dr. King once said, ‘The time is always right to do what is right.’ Sometimes as a leader, the hardest part is discerning what is right. But once you know the path, it’s far easier to walk down it.”

“Looking back on my first years as the president of MUSC, it was clear that the right thing to do was to elevate the value of respect through our diversity and inclusion initiative and to put it as one of our five strategic goals. Now, after two years, I believe we are truly on the brink of transformational and powerful positive cultural change at MUSC, and it is my hope it will extend to the communities beyond our doorstep.”

“This is who we need to be,” Cole explained. “Diversity makes us all stronger. Diverse organizations perform better and better meet the needs of those they serve. And diversity and inclusion changes our future because innovation is born from diversity — diversity of ideas, expertise, education, culture, background. I will tell you, as an academic surgeon, my best ideas haven’t come from me sitting in a room by myself, trying to come up with something. They come from interaction with people to understand different thoughts and ideas.”

After 23 years serving the Charleston community as a surgeon, Cole said he believes it is a privilege to be given the opportunity to care. “As the president of MUSC, life has now provided me the opportunity to care on a larger stage. The work that we’re committed to, diversity and inclusion, is important. And we’re going to move forward one step at a time as a community and as a nation. I’ll end by quoting Dr. King: ‘Not everyone can be famous, but everyone can be great. Because greatness is determined by service.’”