Thanks to the enthusiastic support and unremitting effort by many alumni, the organization has achieved a great success since its official establishment early last year. Now it is time for us to sayThank You again and report to you, our family members, work progress in AAFMUA.
With great efforts by many of our alumni, especially Drs. Ken Chen, Yi-Wu Huang, Yan-Yu Sun, and Ling Zheng, AAFMUA has edited and updated a directory of AAFMUA for our alumni. With this Directory in hand we are able to communicate with classmates and schoolmates whom we have not met or talked to for many years. AAFMUA would like to extend our great appreciation to those alumni who contributed their time and money to make this very useful Directory available. Owing to the great effort by Dr. Yi-Shun Lin, Secretary-General of AAFMUA, We have set up and frequently updated our Web site, https://www.fjmufriends.com/ (please bookmark it for your frequent visit). By this modern communication tool we have been able to provide our alumni the important or interesting information about AAFMUA, FMU, our hometowns, job opportunities (seeMessage Board at the Web site), and to exchange our experience, ideas, and help each other. In the growing course of AAFMUA, the Information Services Division led by Dr. Yishun Lin has added more and more specialized columns to the Web site. For example, <Friendly Visits> brings news on the academic exchange activities between the alma mater and AAFMUA. <Guest Professor Corner>is an useful section gathering information that may be interesting to the U.S. Guest Professors and all alumni who might have similar interest. The list of financial donors to AAFMUA and the page of<News and Events> are kept updated. The alumni appreciate the major contributor to the <Alumni Gardens>, Dr. Wen Lin (Shi Yu), whose literary talent brought us the first spring to the Gardens.
In the past year, Drs. Tongchuan Li and Zhengbo Huang led a group of alumni successfully drafting the Bylaws of AAFMUA, which serves as an important guideline for the function of AAFMUA and made our legal registration successful. Vice Presidents of AAFMUA, Drs. Ling Zheng and Tongchuan Li played an important role in applying for tax exemption status for our non-profit alumni organization. In this long process, we worked closely to study the tax laws and send in application with wealth of information. Dr. Zheng and other alumni, who are in charge of finance management of AAFMUA, also have done an excellent job with bookkeeping. They routinely make financial report to the Working Committee of AAFMUA.
In March 2000, AAFMUA successfully invited a delegation of FMU. The delegation visited six first class universities and NIH in U.S.A. and met more than one hundred of our alumni. They also attended the First General Conference of AAFMUA, which was extremely successfully organized by Dr. Ling Zheng and other alumni. More than 100 alumni enjoyed this historical event. During the U.S. visit of FMU delegation, FMU appointed 35 U.S. alumni as Guest Professors, and an interim agreement on clinical and scientific exchanges between FMU and AAFMU was signed. This agreement serves as an engine to promote the exchanges of clinical medicine, education, and biomedical research between FMU and the hospitals and universities in U.S.A. The alumni association introduces U.S. alumni to FMU when they visit Fujian. Visiting the alma mater has become an excellent opportunity to promote academic exchanges. Dr. Tongchuan Li has been actively coordinating these visiting events. He and Dr. Zhengbo Huang also lead a Recommendation Committee for Guest Professor of FMU. The Committee has begun its function recently. In the past year, twelve of our alumni, Drs. Shidu Yan, Qing Lin, Jinna Wei, Yangheng Fu, Xuanqi Zhang, Jizhen Lin, Lurong Zhang Zhengbo Huang, Yi-Shun lin, Ruoqing Huang, Zhenmin Lei, and Jinxing Yu visited FMU and its affiliated hospitals and gave clinical and research seminars there. After coming back to the U.S.A., several alumni also provided many suggestions to AAFMUA. This kind of valuable feedback will definitely improve our future work in the academic exchanges. Drs. Shidu Yan, Ke-He Ruan, Zhenmin Lei, and He Li have recently accepted seven visiting scholars from FMU to their research laboratories (Hui-Ping Zhang and Zhin-Yan Wu in Dr. Yan’s lab, Gangxiong Huang in Dr. Ruan’s lab, Dexian Lin in Dr. Lei’s lab, and Xiuzhong Dai, Longkun Zhu and Aiqin Chen in Dr. Li’s lab). Several more alumni who hold professorship in the U.S.A. are also planning to accept visiting scholars and PhD students from FMU to their labs. We strongly believe that these academic exchanges will significantly benefit both FMU and research institutes in U.S.A.
One of the AAFMUA’s major tasks is to serve our alumni and the communities we live in. Since the establishment of AAFMUA, the organization has provided a lot of information to our alumni, including information on personal finance, career, medical board, as well as temporary housing. Dr. Ling Zheng, Vice President of AAFMUA and a New York State licensed acupuncturist has provided free medical consultation and acupuncture services to more than 500 American and Chinese patients at Chuang Yan Monastery, NY. Dr. Zhengbo Huang, Director of Clinical Medicine Committee of AAFMUA, Director of Geriatric Service and attending Physician of New York Medical College gave a seminar on “Live Longer and Healthier” also at Chuan Yan Monastery. He also gave a seminar on “Alzheimer Disease” to the physicians in Greater New York area, providing updated information on treatment in geriatric population. AAFMUA will continually offer our communities these free medical services and are now planning to arrange more medically licensed alumni to participate in these warmly welcome activities. To strengthen the Clinical Medicine Committee, Dr. Zhengbo Huang recently recruited more members for the committee. Last year, AAFMUA also organized several alumni reunion parties in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Maryland, providing the exciting opportunities for our alumni to meet new and old friends who live nearby or far away, to welcome new members, and to say good-bye to those who would begin their new job in other states. These activities also provided an opportunity to exchange the experience in our work, study, research and family life, and enhanced our friendship. Here, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Xuan-Qi Zhang (John Zhang) for his successful organization and obtaining financial support for two important parties in Boston. AAFMUA would like to organize more alumni activities in the future. We strongly encourage our alumni to provide us any suggestions so we can serve you better. Recently, AAFMUA has also entertained many guests from FMU, including Chongxian Liao (Vice President of Union Hospital), Pengfei Zhang (Vice President of FMU), Yongkun Lin (Chairman of Dept. of Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital), Daren Li (Former Chairman of Dept. of Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital), etc.
The great success achieved by AAFMUA will not be possible without the continuous support by our alumni. Many of our alumni have been actively participating in a variety of activities and contributing their precious time and money to support the organization. We are deeply grateful to our Honorary Presidents, Drs. Yun-Yin Shen and Guangyi Xu for their generous spiritual and financial support to AAFMUA. Our sincere appreciation is also expressed to many of our alumni who pay the membership fee or donate money to support our organization (for details, please visit our Web site at https://www.fjmufriends.com).
The endeavor made by AAFMUA has been highly appreciated by our alumni. Now more and more alumni have joined in our voluntary and yet very important services. We are looking forward to your contributions to the organization. Your participation and suggestions are warmly welcome.
Ruoqing Huang, M.D., Ph.D.
AAFMUA President