Founding dean of LUCOM named keynote speaker for Commencement hooding ceremony

The Class of 2023 at Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine (LUCOM) will hear from the program’s founding dean, Dr. Ronnie B. Martin, D.O., as part of the college’s annual hooding ceremony during Commencement.

The ceremony will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, at Thomas Road Baptist Church, one day before Liberty’s Commencement Main Ceremony in Williams Stadium on May 12 at 7 p.m. This will mark the sixth graduating class from LUCOM, and 147 graduates are expected to participate in the ceremony.

Martin helped to establish LUCOM, which welcomed its first students in 2014, and he played a key role in seeing the Center for Medical and Health Sciences through to completion. He served four years as the founding dean before retiring in 2016. Martin helped LUCOM receive provisional accreditation from the American Osteopathic Association Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, the programmatic accreditor for colleges of osteopathic medicine in the United States, making it eligible to receive full accreditation prior to graduating its first class of student-doctors in 2018. Martin advanced the medical school’s mission of providing care for the medically underserved in Southern and Southwest Virginia by holding health clinics and establishing partnerships with area hospitals there, thus encouraging student-doctors to remain in the area upon graduation. He also worked to create affiliations and partnerships with health systems throughout the state and led outreach trips for student-doctors and LUCOM staff in Guatemala.

“I have followed (Liberty) and LUCOM closely for many years, in both its challenging times and prosperity,” Martin said. “As with all of us, the challenges have done as much, if not more, to develop its character, ethical standards, and practice. I am proud of the role my wife and I played in its founding, development, and expression of its important and unique role for our nation and world. I look forward to having time to reconnect with old colleagues on the hill as well as across the campus.”

Martin was a practicing physician for more than 20 years before coming to Liberty, serving as an emergency room doctor, a family physician, and a director of medical clinics. He has served on multiple state and federal government health care-related committees and boards as well as the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians (ACOFP) and American Osteopathic Association (AOA). In 2015, Martin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACOFP for his career-long service to the profession of osteopathic family medicine. Martin has worked at six medical schools and has helped establish two.

“I look forward to seeing how Liberty continues to embrace the requirement that myself and the other founders established that it educates and graduates more than doctors, but rather physicians. Doctors are to be respected as they treat disease, but physicians treat people holistically — the body, mind, and spirit of patients — with a goal of not only curing disease but helping them find wellness, happiness, and health,” Martin said.

“‘(LUCOM) has a mission to improve both the earthly and heavenly lives of those it strives to serve through medical practice and research, but also through efforts to advance their spiritual and moral health, acting as charged as the hands and feet of Christ on earth,” he added.

After his time at Liberty, Martin became the interim dean for Kansas City University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine campus in Joplin, Mo. He has spent the past three years as an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at OSU-COM Cherokee Nation campus, teaching in clinical education classes and laboratories. He remains active with the AOA as a COCA inspector and as a member of the Federal Health Programs Committee and as the Chairman of OPAC, the political arm of the profession supporting osteopathic medicine and osteopathic physicians.

“We are so excited to welcome Dr. Ronnie Martin back to Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine,” LUCOM Dean Dr. Joseph R. Johnson said. “Dr. Martin succeeded in establishing the foundation of this center of medical training. He has been instrumental in developing and training the next generation of physicians who continue to share the principles of caring for those in need through a Christ-centered passion for healing. We look forward to his words of encouragement, direction, and mentorship as our students move into the next phase of residency education.”

Visit Liberty.edu/Commencement for more details and a full Commencement 2023 schedule.