The following is a joint statement from Upi Singh, MD, Chair and DEO of the Department of Internal Medicine, and Manish Suneja, MD, Vice Chair for Education and Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program.

It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to the incoming class of interns for the 2025-26 academic year. Today, this impressive group of medical students clears a big hurdle in a journey that started for most of them when they were just teenagers. In a few more months, they will be handed a document certifying what we already know, that they are ready for the next, more rigorous phase of their training. We are very excited for them to show us what they have learned, and we are honored to hone their skills as they become world-class clinicians.

We know their reasons for choosing Iowa may be as diverse as they are, and we will ask each of them later this year to tell us, but we think there will be some common threads in their replies. The first real evidence of the “Iowa IntMed difference” that our new class saw is in our residency program administrative team. Each new class forms their first impressions of Iowa based on their interactions with Abbey Gilpin, Cindy Batzkiel, Denise Floerchinger, and Stacy Sueppel. Our deep thanks to them for their year-long efforts ensuring that every class of interns really knows how committed we are to their career goals.

Those four made sure each intern’s interview day went smoothly and that any questions afterward were answered promptly and comprehensively. The next group responsible for setting expectations are our Chief Residents, specifically our chief for recruitment, Dr. Marie Finkbeiner. Each of our Chief Residents (Drs. Rachel Anderson, Luke Morrey, and Lauren Zabel) along with a dedicated Education Leadership team, do a lot of heavy lifting to ensure our candidates get the most accurate picture of our program and the people who make it great. Special thanks as well to many of our faculty members who took time to meet with candidates who expressed a particular interest in work that aligns with your own.

A successful Match Day does not come from just a couple days a week for a few months. It is an all-year, every-day project. The reason we can recruit the best medical school graduates every year is because they know we are always innovating and supportive. We stand above our peer institutions in our commitment to growth, while always stressing the fundamentals. We work with each resident to learn who they are and what a kind of doctor they want to be. This allows us both to tailor the program to fit their goals, but we continue to expose them to experiences that they might not have considered. This combination shapes them into physicians prepared for any challenge.

How do they know this about Iowa? We have invested in a robust series of social media channels in addition to a continually updated core set of webpages that that showcase our unique elements and our vibrant community at our best. In some ways the medium becomes the message, fresh ideas online mean that fresh approaches for training also exist offline here. We are also grateful to our alumni who serve as ambassadors for Iowa’s excellence both in explicit conversations with their students as well as in the rigor and talent they display in their work every day.

Who will be our next Hawkeye ambassadors in training? We will soon update this map from last year, but once again it sure seems like another class will put the “match” in Match Day. They come from 22 programs in 16 states from all over the country, including 8 graduates of our own Carver College of Medicine, and 2 nations. We are especially pleased that a majority—53 percent—are women. (We are also interested to see how many of our MD graduates choose internal medicine as a specialty, a mark of our faculty’s influence, we think.) Our new class of interns includes 34 physicians, counting the 8 preliminary trainees, 6 of which are Internal Medicine-Ophthalmology preliminary trainees. This total also includes 2 combined Medicine-Psychiatry residents.

We will share more information about this class soon and then introduce you to them all one by one later this summer. For now, please join us in congratulating and welcoming the newest members of our department!

P.S. A special shout-out to R2 Dr. Katrina Dovalovsky, who also matched today into Dermatology residency, which she will begin in 2027. Congratulations!