MACON — Mercer University School of Medicine (MUSM) has announced D. Micah Hester, Ph.D., as the inaugural speaker for the Greenberg-Williams Lectureship. The lecture will take place at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 23 in the Presidents Dining Room on the Mercer University campus in Macon.
Dr. Hester will deliver a lecture titled “From Vocation to Profession: Developing Identity, Vision and Accountability in the Practice of Health Care.” He is chair of the department of medical humanities and bioethics and professor of medical humanities and pediatrics at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine, as well as a clinical ethicist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. MUSM faculty and medical students will be invited to attend an in-person luncheon event, while the general public may join virtually. Register for the virtual event here.
Named for Martin Greenberg, M.D., and Stephen Williams, M.D., the Greenberg-Williams Lectureship features nationally leading figures in the bioethics and medical humanities with a special emphasis on health care for rural and underserved populations.
“Dr. Hester is an important leader in our contemporary bioethics and medical humanities community. In addition to his many publications and academic leadership, he is also a clinician and mentor to his students and junior colleagues,” said Brian Childs, M.Div., Ph.D., HEC-C, chair of Mercer School of Medicine’s Department of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, which is hosting the event. “Dr. Hester’s very first teaching appointment after completing his education and training was with the Mercer University School of Medicine, where he was mentored and embraced by Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Williams. It is appropriate that he is our inaugural speaker in the Greenberg-Williams Lectureship because his coming to Mercer will be a homecoming.”
Dr. Hester serves as co-course director of the practice of medicine course, leads the ethics portion of pharmacy student education, and helps with ethics education for physician assistants and nurses, among others. Along with other department faculty, he provides clinical ethics consultations at both UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital and helps with the research ethics consult service for the UAMS Translational Research Institute. He also serves on numerous committees locally and nationally, he and produces scholarly research in bioethical/philosophical areas.
Dr. Hester has published nine books and numerous journal articles. He has written extensively on the ethics of patient-professional relationships and end-of-life issues. As an editor and chapter author, he has also concentrated on the education of ethics committee membership in two books.
Trained in philosophy with a focus on American pragmatism, Dr. Hester has volumes on the work of William James, John Dewey and William Ernest Hocking. Some of Dr. Hester’s publications can be found in leading bioethics journals, such as The American Journal of Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. He also is regularly invited to give talks on bioethical topics throughout Arkansas, the mid-South, nationally and internationally.
Dr. Hester has been on the board of directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities as well as the Association of Bioethics Program Directors. He also coordinates the Pediatric Ethics Consortium, a national professional initiative to promote pediatric ethics scholarship and education.
About the Greenberg-Williams Lectureship
Named for Martin Greenberg, M.D., and Stephen Williams, M.D., the Greenberg-Williams Lectureship features nationally leading figures in the bioethics and medical humanities with a special emphasis on health care for rural and underserved populations. Topics include not only bioethical issues but also the arts, literature and religion as they apply to an understanding of medicine, illness and human well-being. Support for the lectureship is made possible through a gift to the Dr. Martin Greenberg fund, established by Dr. Greenberg’s family after he passed away in 2021.
About Mercer University School of Medicine
Mercer University’s School of Medicine was established in 1982 to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. Today, more than 60% of graduates currently practice in the state of Georgia, and of those, more than 80% are practicing in rural or medically underserved areas of Georgia. Mercer medical students benefit from a problem-based medical education program that provides early patient care experiences. Such an academic environment fosters the early development of clinical problem-solving and instills in each student an awareness of the place of the basic medical sciences in medical practice. The School opened additional four-year M.D. campuses in Savannah in 2008 and in Columbus in 2021, and a clinical campus in Valdosta in 2024. Following their second year, students participate in core clinical clerkships at the School’s primary teaching hospitals: Atrium Health Navicent The Medical Center and Piedmont Macon Medical Center in Macon; Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah; Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus; and SGMC Health in Valdosta. The School also offers master’s degrees in preclinical sciences and family therapy and Ph.D.s in biomedical sciences and rural health sciences.
