Video: UH Hilo pharmacy college’s White Coat Ceremony welcomes Class of 2029
The White Coat Ceremony is a tradition in medical, pharmacy, and other health care schools to welcome students embarking on their path toward doctoral degrees.
By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.
First-year pharmacy students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo took their Oath of a Pharmacist at the annual White Coat Ceremony held August 22, 2025.
The White Coat Ceremony is a tradition in medical, pharmacy, and other health care schools to mark the transition and welcome students embarking on their path toward doctoral degrees. The Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy event was held at Hale Kihoʻihoʻi, where the college is housed.
The Class of 2029, their families and friends along with faculty from the college, were welcomed to the event by dean of the college, Rae Matsumoto.
In her opening remarks, Matsumoto notes that as the pharmacy students don their white coats during the ceremony, they are “stepping into a legacy of service, innovation, and the acceptance of the sacred responsibility of healing.”
“White Coat is a wonderful time of the year for us,” she says. “It’s when the college welcomes the students into the profession of pharmacy. It’s more than the start of the school year. It’s really ‘welcome to the profession of pharmacy,’ and it’s their introduction and their commitment to being future healthcare providers.”
Matsumoto points out that Hawaiʻi Island has only 60 percent of the physicians needed, a huge access gap.
“So what we’re doing in the College of Pharmacy is really trying to leverage pharmacists and other health care providers, non physician health care providers, to be able to bridge some of that gap,” she says. “That’s something that would be very important for places like the neighbor islands, rural communities where we don’t have enough physicians on the ground.”
Pharmacy student Kiersten Lum, who grew up in the rural community of Waimea on Hawaiʻi Island, says she decided to go to pharmacy school because she wanted to give back to her community
“I wanted to bridge that gap between Hawaiʻi medicine and Western medicine as well,” says Lum. “My ultimate goal and hope is that I’m able to take what I learned here and wherever I decide to do my residency and to bring it back to the island, because there’s a great need for it.”
Story by Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
