PROGRAM Highlights
December 11, 2024
As the year nears its end, the HEAL Program would like to share some of our program’s achievements. We continued our mission to provide a series of events, workshops, and resources to students, faculty, and staff within the Keck community. Our program would like to express its gratitude to everyone for your support throughout the year. We plan to continue making great strides in 2025!
Artist Melissa Ellyn Watkins posing with her artwork exhibition, “The Five Stages of Grief” in Hoyt Gallery. 
Pictured at the Art & Med Lecture for Artist Melissa Watkins (from left to right): Joanne Weingarten Psy.D, Artist Melissa Ellyn Watkins, and Artist in Residence Ted Meyer. 
Artist Melissa Ellyn Watkins posing with students and friends in front of her artwork exhibition, “The Five Stages of Grief” in Hoyt Gallery. 
Pictured at the Art & Med Lecture for Artist Miranda Fae (from left to right): Dr. Purush Rao (Division of Pulmonary Medicine), Artist Miranda Fae, and Artist in Residence Ted Meyer. 
Artist Miranda Fae posing with her artwork exhibition, “Living Proof” in Hoyt Gallery. 
Artist Miranda Fae’s artwork “Living Proof”. 
From left to right: Artist Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja, Anna, and Dr. Schaff. 
From left to right: Artist in Residence Ted Meyer, Artist Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja, and Anna. 
Artist Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja posing with her artwork exhibition, “Menopause Art Project” in Hoyt Gallery.
We continued our Art & Medicine event series, dedicated to highlighting artwork created by artist-patients. This initiative helps provide students with broader insight into the lived experience of patients. Our program showcases the artists’ work in Hoyt Gallery exhibits, and each artist is joined in conversation by our Artist in Residence, Ted Meyer, and a clinician for a lunch event in Mayer Auditorium. The artists that participated in our Art and Medicine events were this year were: Melissa Watkins, Miranda Fae, and Adeola Davies-Ayieloja.
Our Artist & Researcher event is a very special initiative as it connects USC researchers with students from the USC Roski School of Art and Design and Keck School of Medicine of USC’s HEAL Program. Through this partnership, students create art specific to the researcher’s scientific investigation, in an effort to make complex medical research more understandable and accessible to the public. In March, we hosted our 7th annual Artist & Researcher show at the Hoyt Gallery. Pictured above are some of the eye-catching and creative pieces that were displayed at the show. Our program would like to give special thanks to Professor Eric Junker from the USC Roski School of Art & Design and his talented students!
We also continued our Lunch and Learn series that serves our mission by inviting speakers whose disciplines and expertise help inform our collective understanding of the health of individuals, communities, and societies. These events aim to deepen our understanding by providing a space for lectures and conversation. This year our program invited Art Historian Monique Kornell who specializes in the history of anatomical book illustration and the study of anatomy by artists. Her insightful lecture provided a well-rounded discussion of the 2022 exhibition at the Getty Research institute and themes of the representation of the body throughout history from the Renaissance period to present day. As a special part of the Lunch and Learn series, our program also invited graduating M.S. students from the Narrative Medicine program to share their cumulative capstone projects.
In collaboration with the Keck Music Society, our Music and Medicine program hosted the second annual Zora Mihailovich Memorial Concert. This concert honored late musician-in-residence and acclaimed pianist Zora Mihailovich and brought together students, staff, and faculty to celebrate her through musical performances. The event brought the Keck community together and highlights the importance of musical expression. Zora’s legacy continues to live on through free piano lessons for medical students, an initiative that she created at our program.
In addition to the free piano lessons provided by Thornton School of Music graduate students Day Yang and William Chiang, HEAL also continued to offer creative writing workshops taught by writer and lecturer, Abigail Rasminsky. Additionally, this year our HEAL Program newsletter celebrated its first anniversary, highlighting our students and faculty and providing a centralized source of program-related information to the community.
We are also proud to announce that our Artist-in-Residence, Ted Meyer gave his second TED Talk this year in June titled “Better by Illness: Medical Vulnerability as an Artistic Movement”. During his talk he reflected on his experiences as an artist and as a patient advocate. During his work over the past 7 years, Ted has produced over 30 shows for the HEAL Program. His work strives to enhance patient-physician communication and provides a fresh artistic perspective to all of us here at Keck School of Medicine.
Many congratulations, Ted!
Call for Researchers
The Hoyt Gallery is once again producing an innovative and collaborative art show in the spring of 2025 pairing KSOM researchers with students in the Special Projects in Design class at the USC Roski School of Art. Your research plus an artistic interpretation of your work will be exhibited side by side in the Hoyt Gallery. The artists seek to understand your research, and imagine it in new and innovative ways. We welcome both returning researchers and first-timers for this project.
Interested researchers should contact artandmed@gmail.com
M.S. in Narrative Medicine
Learn more about the Narrative Medicine program today! Narrative Medicine is a clinical practice, a method, and an academic field of study that centers individual and community stories in the service of health and social justice. Narrative Medicine works in a range of settings as a tool for building community, developing a practice of self-reflection, and becoming open to other points of view. Join us for an information session!
Creative Writing Workshops
We’re happy to announce that creative writing workshops for faculty will continue to be offered next semester! The workshop series will explore the act of writing and will cover issues of craft—narrative, perspective, point of view, imagery and dialogue. This series will also discuss how writing and reading can open up unexpected storylines, outcomes, possibilities, and develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, our colleagues and patients in a clinical context. No writing experience is necessary!
Workshops will take place every Wednesday from 7:30-8:45pm on Zoom on the following dates:
- January 15th
- February 5th
- March 5th
- April 9th
Events Calendar