Citation read by Martha N. Hill
In presenting
M. Roy Schwarz
For the Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters
May 17, 2007

Your exemplary medical career and lifelong dedication to international health are best described through a favorite proverb:

If you plant for one year, plant rice.
If you plant for ten years, plant a fruit tree.
If you plant for a hundred years, educate your children.

You have passionately planted with that century-long perspective, leading the China Medical Board of New York, a foundation devoted to medical, nursing, and public health research and education in China and Asia as a whole. As board president, you nurtured the decades-old relationship between Johns Hopkins and Peking Union Medical College, advancing that longstanding connection to establish China's first doctoral-level nursing program and a geriatrics training program for physicians and nurses.

Among your numerous other successes are the establishment of the Institute for International Medical Education, which defined essential requirements for medical school graduates worldwide. The project guided the significant education reform that occurred in China during the latter part of the 20th century.

At home, you founded the Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho Program at the University of Washington in 1972, providing medical education to students in three states that did not have medical schools of their own. Over more than three decades, more than 60 percent of the program's graduates remained in the region, many providing primary care in rural, underserved areas.

M. Roy Schwarz, physician, educator, and tireless advocate for international multidisciplinary medical cooperation, The Johns Hopkins University is proud to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.