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Keefer Society Inducts Class of 2022

Bernard E. Kreger, MD, MPH, receives his plaque from BUMC Provost and BUSM Dean Karen Antman, MD, and Dean’s Advisory Board Chair Donald M. Kaplan in recognition of his membership into the Chester S. Keefer, MD, Society.

Members of the BU School of Medicine Chester S. Keefer, MD, Society, which recognizes donors who have supported the school with lifetime gifts totaling $50,000 or more, gathered in person for the first time since 2019 for a dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston.

After a cocktail reception, Keefer members and their guests heard welcoming remarks from BUMC Provost and BUSM Dean Karen Antman, MD, and Donald M. Kaplan, MD (MED’73), chair of the Dean’s Advisory Board, and guest speakers, BUSM students Lauren Berry, MD (MED’22) and Paul Franco, MD (MED’22).

Dean Antman then introduced the Keefer Society Class of 2022:

Platinum Members

• Peter T. Paul

Bronze Members

• Rahul S. Anand, MD (MED’01) and Meredith Anand • Clare L. Dana, MD (MED’69) • Thomas R. Insel, MD (MED’74) and Deborah J. Insel • David J. Salant, MD and Anne Salant

Mercury Members

• Elliot M. Bloom, Esq. and Anne P. Bloom • Lisa B. Caruso, MD, MPH • David P. DiChiara, MD (MED’84) and Maria J. DiChiara • I. Howard Fine, MD (MED’66) and Victoria Fine • Ronald S. Gabriel, MD (MED’63) and Pamela Hobbs • Marvin J. Hoffman, MD (MED’47) • Lori A. Jurado and Xavier Jurado • Bernard E. Kreger, MD, MPH • Hubert W. McDonald and Ann S. McDonald • Mark S. Michelman, MD (MED’67) and Susan F. Michelman • John F. O’Brien, MD (MED’59) • Pedram Salimpour, MD (MED’00) and Stacy Weiss, MD n

Paul Franco, MD (MED’22) delivers remarks to those gathered for the Keefer Society dinner. Dillon Karst, MD (CAS’18, MED’22), right, and Helen Soh, MD (MED’22), left, provided musical accompaniment during the cocktail reception.

The Medical Student Scholarship Fund, a Konefal Family Tradition

Several years ago, Joe and Karen Konefal returned to Boston from their Virginia home to celebrate the birth of a grandson. As they walked along the banks of the Charles River—both the MIT side where their son was in graduate school and the Boston side where they had lived as young newlyweds in the 1970s—a rush of memories swept over them from the days when Joe was a medical student at BUSM and Karen was a nurse at University Hospital (now Boston Medical Center).

“It was a special time in many ways. I remember sitting on a bench beside the Charles, looking out at the familiar Boston skyline, feeling happy to be back in Boston, and realizing that Karen and I had come full circle,” said Joe, who graduated from BUSM in 1977 and is now retired after a long, fulfilling career as a urologist.

Although Konefal completed his medical residency in Virginia, then worked and raised his family there, he and his siblings grew up in Medford, and their father, Stanley Konefal, a surgeon and 1947 BUSM graduate, practiced at Massachusetts hospitals. Their local roots ran deep.

Stanley Konefal and his wife Catherine initiated what has become a generational tradition of supporting BUSM students by contributing to the School of Medicine’s annual fund for many years before establishing the Stanley H. and Catherine M. Konefal Student Scholarship Fund in 1991. When he passed away in 2015, Stanley Konefal bequeathed a large gift to his scholarship fund to continue that legacy. Wishing to continue the tradition of philanthropy his father and mother began, Joe encouraged other family members to donate to the scholarship fund, and subsequently renamed it the Konefal Family Scholarship Fund in 2016.

Joe and Karen hope their fund sends a message of generational appreciation for the career choice made by the future physicians they support. Recalling his private practice as well as being an assistant professor of urology at Eastern Virginia Medical School, he notes that a career in medicine is a big commitment. Physicians work long hours that include nights, weekends, and holidays, and often must come to the hospital on a moment’s notice.

“Because of the many demands and sacrifices it entails, you have to love it,” he says.

The demands of medical school, residency, and private practice impact the family as well.

“Spouses in particular must be understanding and supportive,” says Karen.

Because the Konefals know firsthand how much medical students, physicians, and their families must sacrifice, they hope their scholarship recipients feel that they are valued for their dedication to the medical field.

Konefal says he was fortunate that his parents paid his way through his undergraduate education and half of medical school; after his marriage, he struggled to pay his own medical school tuition for his last two years at BUSM. Karen recalled working many extra shifts at the hospital and eventually working two jobs to pay their bills. Because of their experience, Joe and Karen felt a personal connection to BUSM students in need of financial assistance and hope that their family scholarship fund will enable BUSM students in need to graduate without burdensome loans to repay.

“We’re well aware of the astronomical cost of medical school, and I worry about the students,” says Joe. “It’s sad to think that insufficient financial resources can stand in the way of young men and women aspiring to become physicians. With knowledge of physicians’ current salaries, I question a young primary care doctor’s ability to pay back significant medical school loans.”

For the last five years of his practice, Konefal worked in a poor, rural area on the eastern shore of Virginia, which helps him relate to BUSM students who also treat underserved patient populations through their clinical work at Boston Medical Center.

“Caring for underserved patients was practicing medicine at its best; the way it was meant to be,” he says. He forged a deep connection with patients who were grateful for the medical care and remains in contact with many of them today.

Joe remains grateful for the foundation that BUSM provided him almost 50 years ago, and is optimistic that the BUSM scholarship recipients will experience as many rewards from their medical careers as he did.

Joe and Karen especially enjoy meeting and interacting with their students personally at the annual BUSM Scholarship Dinner, and Joe credits the challenges and rewards of his medical education, training, and career with adding to his personal connection with the scholarship recipients.

“It’s wonderful to get to know them and to see their energy, enthusiasm, and dedication,” Karen adds. “Whether personally or through virtual communication, we continue to be in awe of these highly motivated BUSM students, especially at a time in medicine that brings additional challenges imposed by COVID-19.”

The Konefals are impressed with the unwavering commitment these recipients demonstrate in choosing a field challenged by a pandemic that has brought physicians personal risk, unprecedented demands, and high levels of stress, all amidst the negativity generated by what has become a politicized medical condition.

“We have every confidence in the success of these future physicians to ultimately make a positive difference for their patients and their communities.” Karen says. “We feel certain they will always make us proud.” n

Joe and Karen Konefal

A History of Making Dreams Come True

In Retirement, Debbie Wilson Continues to Show Her Commitment to Students through the Wilson Scholarship Fund

The interview is wrapping up when Debbie Wilson rises, unprompted, from her desk and turns her laptop to face the large windows of her Maine vacation home. The web camera captures a slope of beach grass with a boardwalk leading to a broad panoramic sweep of the Atlantic Ocean. As Wilson settles back into her seat, the camera reveals the phrase “Dreams Really Do Come True” painted in ribbon calligraphy, like a thought balloon, overhead on the wall behind her.

Wilson gave Boston University School of Medicine her all for 49 years, working long days as a researcher, educator, and assistant dean of admissions. Completely dedicated to her profession and the University, she served on BU and BUSM key committees; shepherded in new educational technologies, and helped further the dreams of generations of medical students on their way to medical careers.

Wilson, who recently married, is more familiar at BUSM as Professor Emerita of Anatomy & Neurobiology Debbie Vaughan. She retired nearly two years ago, and now spends her days cooking, exploring new interests, and tending to her gardens and pets with her husband, retired dentist and childhood friend John Wilson.

“Being a medical school educator, I developed an appreciation for what an outstanding group of young people we engage with. It was a real privilege to work with our students,” she says.

Wilson continues to support them through the Deborah W. Wilson, PhD, Endowed Scholarship, established nearly two years ago, which helps one or more medical students annually who are residents of her native home state of New Hampshire.

Throughout her teaching career, Wilson donated money from her paycheck to help BUSM capital projects like the Medical Residence and the Godley Digital Media Studio, as well as student scholarship funds. Upon retiring, she initiated her own student scholarship.

“A scholarship fund was something that I believed in, and thought I should do,” said Wilson, who saw the scholarship as a way to show students that she continued to care about them and their goals.

In her long career at the University, Wilson interacted with students in many ways. As a graduate student, she completed her PhD in biology at the school of Graduate Arts and Sciences in 1971, followed by a postdoc fellowship in neuroanatomy with renowned BUSM neuroanatomist Alan Peters, PhD, studying the effects of aging on the central nervous system.

She began developing a strong sense of loyalty for BUSM while working for Peters, recalling, “He ran a very collegial, open, supportive department.” Wilson knew that openness was not always the case in research institutions, where colleagues can be secretive and not inclined to share information.

Like many researchers at BUSM, Wilson also taught medical and graduate school classes. By the mid-1990s, she curtailed her research work and took on a full-time teaching position in both histology (microscopic examination of tissues) and neurosciences for the Anatomy & Neurobiology department. Over the years, she’s seen the medical school education focus shift from lecturer to student.

“Teaching wasn’t about me, it was about making sure the students succeed,” says Wilson. To that end, she created online videos and interactive modules to help students approach the basic material in a different way, and flipped the traditional teaching methodology, instructing students to undertake lab work first so that they had firsthand exposure to a topic before they learned more about it through classroom lectures.

She was an early adopter in the use of virtual microscopy, examining digitized slides using a computer as a microscope. In 2001, Wilson published an atlas of histology with the Oxford University Press that included an interactive videodisk.

“We have a lot of students who are good at learning and memorizing,” she says. “But teaching is about generating understanding.”

In part due to her student-focused approach and use of technology, Wilson received the prestigious Metcalf Cup and Prize in 2013, Boston University’s highest honor for excellence in teaching.

Serving on the admissions committee for 17 years and as an assistant dean of admissions for 10, Wilson saw the student body change over time from a largely homogeneous population in the ’90s to one more representative of the diverse world in which we live today. The school also has adopted a holistic approach to admissions that considers the desire to help others in addition to academic talent and drive, and strives to keep student debt as manageable as possible. Wilson notes that many BUSM students are attracted to the opportunity to administer to the underserved at Boston Medical Center, the primary teaching affiliate of BUSM and the largest safety-net hospital in New England.

“We have a lot of students who come to BUSM because they are interested in urban healthcare and the issues faced by people who’ve had lives very, very different from what most students have experienced,” she says.

She recalls a first-year medical student who wanted more than classrooms and clinical work: “She said, ‘You know, I could spend all my evenings studying gross anatomy, but I have to go out and work in the community to help me realize why I am here.’ I think we see more of that type of student, and scholarships help us enroll someone who otherwise might not be able to attend a private medical school.

“I believe we should do what we can do to help our students achieve their goals.” n