Four years ago, a group of 50 students signed on as guinea pigs.

They would be the first to go through the newly opened UC Riverside School of Medicine, a school that had been forced to delay that opening for a year when it could not get adequate funding. It took an intense cobbling together of government and private funding from the community to overcome that problem.

The school also had a somewhat unique mission: focus heavily on much-needed family physicians and try to keep its graduates local in order to address the Inland Empires chronic physician shortage.

At 6 p.m. Friday, June 9, 40 of those students will graduate and become doctors. All 40 will go to their first choice of residency programs, an unusual success rate, said Neil Schiller, the medical schools associate dean of student affairs. He said the hope he and his colleagues had for the school four years ago has paid off.

We took a chance on students that we thought were perfect for the mission of our medical school and were delighted when they took a chance on us, said Schiller, who oversaw the selection process. We realize how import that decision must have been for some, picking a medical school that had no track record as a four-year medical school.

Small groups of medical students had been spending their first two years of study at UCR since the 1970s those students then completed their training at UCLA but the school never had a full program.

School of Medicine Dean DeborahDeas said the first class of students are trailblazers.

They took a chance with us in being the inaugural class, she said.

At least some of the students saw it differently.

I felt like they were taking a chance on me more than I was taking a chance on them, said Isaiah Roggow, 38, who will be starting a residency in family medicine later this month at Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria. Ive never had a day when I regretted my decision. This was an awesome move.

Roggow said he came to UCR, in part, because of the programs heavy emphasis on family medicine and on providing care for underserved populations. He, like most of the medical students, spent time working at the schools free clinic in downtown Riverside that targets low-income and homeless patients. He said he appreciated the camaraderie among his classmates and the faculty and was attracted to the residency in Santa Maria for the same reasons.

I chose it because it echoed the same vibe I got from UC Riverside, he said, the sense of family, the sense of community. It felt like a good fit.

Roggow is among 30 students who are taking residencies out of the Inland Empire. The other 10 will remain local, less than most administrators had hoped for, but Deas called it a good beginning.

Dr. Paul Lyons, the associate dean who oversees education, said the small percentage is a reflection of the quality of the graduates.

One-quarter will end up in residencies here in the Inland Empire, which is maybe lower than wed hope. But they had opportunities all over the country in really good programs, Lyons said, pointing out that 100 percent of the students were matched with their top residency choice. Thats quite rare. Ive been in medical education for 25 years and Ive never seen it.

Deas said shes not seen it during the 20 years shes been an educator either. She also said she believes the medical school will be able to make a local impact even with 25 percent of students remaining local, particularly when the class size increases. This year, the school will admit 66 students into the program. Deas hopes to raise that to 125 in the next five years.

One of the students staying in the area is Esther Chu Zarecki. She will begin a family medicine residency at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana in two weeks. Zarecki not only earned a doctor of medicine degree in her four years at UCR, she also had two children. The youngest is just weeks old.

The demands of the medical program combined with parenting, she said, allowed me to see how much of a challenge I can handle.

Chu Zarecki said her graduation is a little bittersweet. She will miss the bonds she formed with her classmates.

I think the fact that UCR was so small, the class and the staff and administration was more like a family, she said. We know each other and each others kids names and even pets. Im excited that this journey is over but also kind of definitely a little sad as well. Its like leaving your nest.

That closeness helped her as a student, she said, giving her the kind of support that allowed her to feel she could ask for help when she needed it. She said one of the things shes learned is to recognize what she doesnt know.

There is no way you can know everything, she said. You have to be OK with that as a physician.

Chu Zarecki said she is happy to be staying in the Inland Empire, where shell be close to her extended family and some of her fellow doctors.

Another graduate, Rafael Ornelas, is heading to northern California for an internal medicine residency at UC Davis, but he said he might return to the Inland region.

I can definitely see myself moving back here, said Ornelas, who earned his bachelors degree in chemistry from UCR Ive been in the Inland Empire for 10 years. I understand the need here.

He said graduating from medical school is not just the culmination of four years of work, but of a journey that started many years, and many classes, before that. The feeling of achieving that goal hasnt yet sunk in, he said, and he expects todays graduation may feel a bit unreal.

For the most part, its going to be a kind of disbelief, he said. Even now Im just starting to feel those butterflies in my stomach.

Not all of the inaugural class will get diplomas this year. Schiller, the associate dean, said nine students either had to take breaks from the program or had to repeat portions of the program, but theyre expected to graduate next year. One dropped out to raise a family. Nonetheless, he said he is happy with the schools success so far.

I told my wife I probably should retire now because Ill never have a better year, he said. At Fridays ceremony, he said, I think Im going to be pinching myself.

For Lyons, the ceremony will bring relief.

We opened (the school) with a combination of hope and anxiety, he said. When the graduates residency matches were announced March 20, he added, I think thats the first time that I exhaled. I think the entire community should feel that way. This has been a breath-holding experience for the whole community who were pulling along with us and waiting to exhale right along with us. This really is, in a remarkable way, the communitys school.

The students are likely to be less staid. Roggow expects to be exhaling more energetically.

Like, bam! Im a doctor, he said. Whoo hoo!

UCR Medical School

What: Graduation of inaugural class

When: 6 p.m. Friday

Where: UCR Recreation Center

Info:http://commencement.ucr.edu/medschool.html

Follow this link:

UC Riverside medical school officials celebrate as first group of medical-school students graduates - Press-Enterprise