Forever influenced by Rochester’s distinctive approach to medical education, Anne Moore continues the legacy by supporting scholarships for future doctors.

For Anne Moore ’70, ’74M (MD), being a physician has often meant figuring out difficult problems. Her Ģ����ý education helped instill a determination to get to the bottom of those questions that arise when caring for a patient. Faced with a medical challenge, Moore would go to all the resources she could to figure it out. She says, “I approach my work with a curiosity, asking myself, ‘What’s going on here, and can I fix it?’” Throughout her career, that process has been very rewarding.

Moore believes the Ģ����ý’s distinctive approach to medical education shaped who she is as a physician. Rochester’s biopsychosocial model is patient-centered and puts equal emphasis on understanding the biology as well as the environmental, social, and psychological issues affecting a patient. Reflecting on her experience, Moore shares, “The education is very unique in the sense that from day one we were talking about the interaction between mental health and physical health. This has produced a special breed of the most caring physicians, who pause to notice the emotional state of their patients.”

Moore received her undergraduate degree from the Ģ����ý and stayed to attend the School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD). Her parents were teachers, and growing up, Moore thought she would follow their footsteps and teach math. When she arrived at Rochester, she chose to take many liberal arts classes alongside her math major. She saw her peers in the sciences were spending much of their time in the lab, but she knew that was not for her. She began to be interested in medicine while doing a research study about health education in schools. With the support of family, especially her father who enthusiastically urged her to follow her dreams, Moore entered medical school at SMD. Once she began her primary clerkship, Moore gravitated toward working with younger patients and went on to select pediatrics as a specialty.

Recently Moore celebrated her 50th medical school reunion. She has had a fulfilling career, working at Kaiser Permanente in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and then at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Currently, she works as a travel physician, visiting hospitals around the country. Now nearing retirement, Moore also devotes much of her time to the equestrian program at her property, Kent Hill Farm, near Denver, CO.

With so many fond memories of Rochester and feeling that the school helped to create who she is today, Moore joined the Wilson Society and established a bequest to support scholarships at SMD. Moore is eager to help other students have the same experience she did, and ultimately to ensure that future doctors value the interrelation of mind and body that she gleaned from the Ģ����ý’s biopsychosocial approach.

“It’s my honor and pleasure to participate in giving. I find it very meaningful to continue the legacy.”

One family’s tradition and a Rochester legacy

Deciding to pursue vascular surgery was like entering the family business for Kevin J. Geary, MD, whose father was part of a noteworthy line of surgeons who established the field in Rochester, NY. Joseph E. Geary, MD, was urged to come to Rochester by Charles Rob, MD, to practice as one of the first fellowship trained physicians in the city. Geary describes how, “back then, in 1960, there were only a couple of vascular surgery fellowship programs in the country. Dr. Rob, of course, had become a renowned pioneer in the field, after his team performed the first carotid endarterectomy in England. Rob then came to the United States to become chief of surgery at the URochester Medical Center (URMC).”

The oldest of six children, Kevin Geary was a young child when his family moved to Rochester and remembers his father making rounds at the old Park Avenue Hospital, and all of the local community hospitals, to do surgeries. When he was eight or nine years old, Geary would go along with his father on these rounds.

Geary always planned to follow his father’s footsteps as a physician. His mother was a nurse, so it felt very natural to go into the medical field, but his father encouraged him to study other subjects on the side. Growing up, the family worked on many creative projects together. Once they built a 45-ft African mahogany schooner. “It took seven years, through high school and college, and my dad taught me and my siblings all about woodworking,” Geary recalls.

Geary went to Union College and became a language major, studying abroad in France and Germany. When it was time to take the MCAT, he showed up much to the surprise of all the pre-med students who had never seen him before in their classes.

The Ģ����ý was looking for well-rounded medical students, so it was a good fit. Geary remembers the rigorous curriculum, how much emphasis there was on the biopsychosocial approach, and how he and his peers joked a bit about it, until they met George Engel, MD, and John Romano, MD, and then understood—without a doubt—how significant that model was. Looking back, Geary says, “I enjoyed the camaraderie among my classmates, and the closeness that still remained when we recently celebrated our 40^th medical school reunion.” In those years, the medical students often socialized with nursing students. That was how Geary met his wife, Holly Simpson ’83N, ’09N (MS). In spite of the demands of his training, he shares, “those were fun and hilarious times.”

Geary changed his mind repeatedly about what direction he wanted to take in medicine and recalls how supportive his advisors were. He started out with an intention to pursue ophthalmology, with James Aquavella, MD, as his mentor, but ultimately, he was drawn into surgery. When his fellow anatomy partners heard about his plans, it came as no surprise to them. From day one, working side-by-side on a cadaver, they knew he was going to be a surgeon.

After looking at residencies all over, Geary ultimately matched at Ģ����ý and started his internship in 1983. “In those days,” Geary says, “residents worked about 100 hours each week, before there were limitations on the schedules. My peers and I emerged from our surgery training, ready to set up shop on our own.”

Geary intended to go into plastic surgery. “There was a laboratory, a little room with a microscope,” he recalls, “where the plastic surgery residents learned how to do vascular surgery by practicing on parts of chickens and rat femoral arteries.” Later this became a true lab rotation. That’s when he started putting together little blood vessels, and by the end of residency he knew he was meant to go into vascular surgery instead.

At the time, all the vascular surgery fellows rotated with Geary’s father. By the third year, Geary remembers that’s when the fun really began, “When we worked together in surgery,” he says, “I would make a suggestion, ‘Dad, let’s do it this way,’ and the nurses would laugh. They had never heard anyone talk back to my father before. To me it wasn’t talking back. It was just as natural as suggesting another type of tool to use in our woodworking project.”

In addition to his father, Geary had many mentors who made an impression throughout his training. “You can get great experience from a lot of great surgeons,” Geary says, “if you take away little bits to make a whole. The more mentors you have, the better.” James DeWeese, MD—the former chair of vascular surgery who helped build the division—was one who stood out to Geary and who helped convince him to go into the field. Another was James Adams, MD. Geary remembers that an article came out at the time calling his father “the man with the golden hands,” and “Dr. Adams joked that if my father was the hand, then I must at least be one of the fingers.” From then on, Adams called him “golden thumb” or “thumb” for short.

After completing his education, Geary joined his father in practice at Vascular Surgery Associates. He is affiliated with Rochester Regional Health and also sees a lot of potential for collaboration with the URochester. “All my partners trained at Strong,” he says. “The connection goes all the way around.”

In honor of James DeWeese, Geary has supported the DeWeese Endowment. Thinking about what motivates him to contribute toward vascular surgery education at Rochester, Geary says, “the legacy of vascular surgery at the URochester is huge, and I’d like to see it remain that way.”

Dreams sparked at the URochester, combined with life-changing scholarship support, led to a fulfilling career in medicine and teaching for Alan Kozak.

When Alan James Kozak ’65, ’69M (MD), ’72M (Res), arrived at the URochester as a college student, he had never spent a day away from home. Quickly his universe expanded through friendship and the heavy demands of his coursework—balancing literature with his pre-medical studies. He recalls the late-night sounds of typewriters in response to looming deadlines and the party music that spanned from Chubby Checkers to The Beatles.

It was at a concert, listening to Maynard Ferguson on the trumpet, when an encounter with two medical students sparked Kozak’s dream of staying at Rochester to pursue his medical school education at the School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD).

At the time, Kozak imagined a future as a surgeon. However, as he graduated from SMD and completed an elective rotation, following an internist in his hometown of Binghamton, NY, he realized how much he valued face-to-face time with patients, hearing their stories and getting to know their families over time. Kozak began an internship year in internal medicine at the Mary lmogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, NY and then returned to Strong Memorial Hospital. The long hours, clinical responsibilities, and academic demands often seemed impossible, but the special camaraderie of his class and pride as “Strong’s Medicine Residents” kept him going. Kozak finished his medical training with a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Minnesota and returned to Cooperstown to help create the Infectious Disease Division at Bassett.

Now, having completed a rewarding clinical career, Kozak continues to teach medical students as an attending physician. His interest in literature persisted well past his undergraduate years, inspiring him to provide a writing prompt to his students, which later led to the publishing of Let Me Listen to Your Heart: Writings by Medical Students. The book is a collection of essays, poems, and reflections by medical students from the Ģ����ý and from Columbia University, as they completed clinical rotations at Bassett.

Thinking back on his education, Kozak shares, “Like many of us, I entered college with no money. Thanks to a very generous Ģ����ý scholarship, and later support from the Clark Foundation, I was able to graduate from college and then medical school without a dollar of debt.”

In gratitude, Kozak now supports the Ģ����ý so that future students can have the same educational opportunities that he did. Kozak included the University in his estate planning and established two scholarships to support both undergraduate and medical education.

Kozak hopes to ease the journey for students and believes there is great importance in paying his good fortune forward.

“If I can help students realize dreams that lead to a career as fulfilling as mine has been, I will have accomplished a lot. And this will remain my legacy,” he says.

Aekta Miglani ’04, ’10 (MD), ’13M (Res) pursued her undergraduate and medical education at the University and now serves as the vice chair of operations and medical director of Strong Memorial Hospital’s emergency department.

As a child, Aekta Miglani ’04, ’10 (MD), ’13M (Res) wanted to be an artist or an architect someday. Or maybe even an astronaut. She dreamed big. Her parents encouraged her varied interests while underscoring the future they saw for her: they thought she should pursue a career in medicine.

When it came time to apply to college, Miglani, who grew up in Pittsford, NY, wanted to prove her parents wrong (as many teenagers do). “My plan was to apply to the Ģ����ý’s undergraduate-to-medical school program and show my parents that I could get in, after which it would be clear to everyone that medicine would not be the right path for me,” says Miglani.

A new plan

Miglani’s plan started off as she imagined: she was accepted into the University’s Rochester Early Medical Scholars (REMS) program, which grants select students admission to both the undergraduate College and the School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD). Soon after, she did what she was supposed to do and met with her advisor, Gregory Connors, MD, the head of REMS. Connors told Miglani what she didn’t expect to hear.

“He said that as a college student at Rochester, I could still pursue my creative interests and that the best physicians use both sides of their brain,” she adds. “I was intrigued and quickly realized that medicine could very well be a good fit.” Her parents were right after all.

And, because Miglani was already accepted into SMD, she had proven her aptitude for the sciences. This meant she could take full advantage of Rochester’s flexible undergraduate curriculum, which she did. For instance, she took courses in art, religion, and philosophy—and she loved it all.

Meeting the right people

At the end of her senior year of college, Miglani was a bit nervous about the pending demands of medical school. That’s when she met , a recent transplant to Rochester and the new director of the REMS program, who inspired and reassured her.

“I was awestruck by Dr. Nobay’s knowledge and presence,” noted Miglani. “I thought: Rochester attracts the most amazing people.” Nobay—now a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the associate dean for student affairs—and others like her reaffirmed Miglani’s decision to become a physician.

Miglani has never looked back. At the end of medical school, she was on track to pursue a surgical residency. Then, in her fourth and final year of medical school, Miglani did her final clinical rotation in .

“After the second or third shift in Strong Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, I realized that this—not surgery—was actually the place for me,” she says. “I fell for the people who worked in the ED and their approach to medicine.”

A career full of milestones

When it came time to match for her residency, Rochester became Miglani’s first choice—again. She wanted to stay in Strong’s ED and she did.

After her three-year residency ended, Miglani–who had become one of the ED’s chief residents–thought it was finally time to leave Rochester. Fate intervened though; her mother was diagnosed with cancer and Miglani needed to stay nearby. She spoke with , a professor and the chair of the ED, about staying another year. “Dr. Kamali told me that I could stay, but that I might never want to leave—he was right.”

Since completing her residency in 2018, Miglani has served in a variety of roles within the ED and is currently its vice chair of operations and medical director. “The ED is a special place,” she says. “Everyone is guided by a certain ethos and a commitment to each other and all those who come to us for help.”

It’s been a career full of milestones, too. For instance, in the early days of COVID, Strong sent Miglani and a small health care team to New York City to treat patients. “We got through a giant bag of unknowns and came back with tools that helped us manage our ED response when COVID hit Rochester hard,” she adds.

Miglani has also been involved in many community outreach programs, including programs with the Rochester City School District that encourage students to explore careers in medicine. In 2021, Miglani was nominated for a Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce ATHENA Award, too, which recognizes top women leaders in the community.

Strong Expansion Project

More than 110,000 patients visited the ED in 2021 in a space designed to serve less than half of that number of people. Strong ED’s overcrowded waiting room and treatment areas are just some of the issues that the will address in phases, with scheduled completion in 2027.

The project, the largest capital project in the Ģ����ý’s history, will nearly quadruple the ED’s footprint and will have a designated triage area, distinctive waiting rooms and private treatment areas for adult and pediatric patients, and will house the Comprehensive Psychiatry Emergency Program and the Kessler Trauma Center. Plans also include a new nine-story inpatient bed tower, which will add additional floors for cardiovascular care, short-term patient observation, and future operating rooms and treatment services, along with more private inpatient rooms.

Until that happens, Miglani and the ED staff will continue to use every space possible to treat patients, from hallways to former staff areas to make-shift patient and family consultation areas. “It’s challenging, but we do our best,” she says. “This is our community, and we are here to serve it.”