Beyond the White Coat: UCalgary Medicine Campus Life Spotlight

Leena Mazhar

UCalgary Medicine’s campus life flourishes with unique traditions and community initatives.

Medical school is a long-term commitment measured less in years than in resilience, repetition, and constant adaptation. At the University of Calgary (UCalgary), the three-year program condenses what is typically four years of training into a high-intensity learning environment (with no summer breaks!). The pace can feel relentless, jumping from one system to the next with little time in between. However, the UCalgary MD classes have created a colourful student life, filled with cultural celebrations to honour our diversity, interest groups to explore various career pathways, advocacy groups to support our communities, and much more. 

NOTE: This article does not include all student groups with the Calgary Medical Students’ Association, but rather a spotlight of a few who consented to release media.

Welcome to the Menagerie! 

UCalgary's most memorable and unique tradition, talked about across classes and alumni, is the Ucalgary MD Menagerie. 

Rather than referring to classes by their graduation year, upper-year students bestow each incoming cohort with a unique animal name that captures the defining quirks, challenges, and personality of that class. The result is a growing menagerie of memorable identities, each with its own lore and personality.

Take the Class of 2026, for example. As the inaugural class to trial UCalgary's new Re-Imagining Medical Education (RIME) curriculum, they became the "guinea pigs" for a new era of medical training. Their upper-year colleagues, the Spiny Lumpsuckers, suitably named them the Lunkaryas, a species of guinea pig. What began as a playful nickname became a lasting symbol of adaptability, resilience, and a willingness to blaze new trails.

It is an unconventional tradition, but that's exactly the point. The menagerie reflects the humour, creativity, and camaraderie that define student life at UCalgary. Alumni who return as preceptors often bond with students over their animal personalities, building a foundation for shared stories and lifelong connections.

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The Wobblegongs (Class of 2028) receiving their customized jerseys.

MMI videos, Med Olympics, the Amazing Race, and Naming Ceremonies

The UCalgary MD student body takes orientation and welcoming their new classmates very seriously, starting long before the new class has even been chosen! A unique Canadian medical student tradition, the MMI video, is a humorous parody on the highs and lows of the Canadian medical school admission process. This year, the Class of 2028 (the Wobbegongs) were lucky to have a former professional actor and director in their midst. As such, the MMI video team created a 17-minute, 130 person cast and crew production of UCalgary's MMI parody music video. 

But the excitement and class bonding doesn’t stop there. Since orientation (O-month) at UCalgary takes place over the summer, it is also taken incredibly seriously. The calendar is packed with signature events, from picnics and social outings to the fiercely competitive Med Olympics and the ever-popular Amazing Race: Med Edition, where teams race across Calgary tackling creative challenges together.

The month culminates in one of UCalgary Medicine's most anticipated traditions: the Naming Ceremony. Here is when the incoming class officially receives its place in the Menagerie, closing out a month of laughter and teamwork. By the time O-month ends, classmates have become teammates, friends, and begun establishing a lifelong professional community.

Naming Ceremony 2025, hosted by the Class of 2027! 

Celebrating Diversity through Cultural Exploration

UCalgary Medicine prides itself on diversity of the student body, welcoming learners from various ethnic and religious backgrounds to create a mosaic of lived-experiences from a variety of cultural groups. 

Moreover, medicine requires cultural awareness. Cultural student groups offer education on providing culturally competent care, from understanding how health beliefs differ across communities to recognizing how systemic barriers shape patient experiences in clinical settings. For example, student-led cultural associations often host workshops, speaker events, and case-based discussions that highlight real-world scenarios where cultural context changes both diagnosis and treatment decisions. 

At UCalgary Medicine, diversity is something to be celebrated, shared, and learned from. Last year, the Class of 2027, the Potoos, hosted a Multicultural Night, inviting students from all three years to showcase the cultures, languages, and traditions that shape who they are. More than a cultural celebration, the evening encouraged meaningful conversations about cultural humility and how future physicians can provide more compassionate, culturally informed care to every patient they encounter.

Students dressed in traditional attire, taught their peers about customs and celebrations, performed music and dance, and shared stories from their communities. Naturally, no cultural celebration would be complete without food. The evening concluded with an extraordinary feast featuring dishes from more than 10 countries, transforming the event into a vibrant celebration of the diversity that strengthens both the student body and the future of healthcare.

Multicultural night 2025!

Advocacy and health equity groups

A core value shared across medicine is advocacy for our communities and patients. Medical students hone this skill by engaging with individuals with lived experience, community experts, and partner organizations that provide education and deepen understanding of health inequities. Through these interactions, advocacy moves beyond theory and becomes rooted in real stories, real barriers, and real systems of care.

The Women’s Fitness Collective (WFC) empowers women through movement, wellness, and education, while also challenging the narrow-minded framing of health and fitness in medical spaces. The WFC emphasizes accessibility, body inclusivity, and sustainable approaches to wellbeing, reminding students that health promotion is deeply tied to culture, identity, and lived reality rather than one-size-fits-all prescriptions.

Women’s Fitness Collective X RUMBLE Boxing Calgary collaboration

Cancer awareness and community impact: Stick It To Cancer

One of the most visible and widely recognized student-led initiatives at UCalgary is Stick It To Cancer (SITC), a campaign dedicated to cancer awareness, fundraising, and meaningful community engagement. Recognized by local news channels, social media platforms and personalities, SITC blends the excitement of hockey with tangible community impact.

Throughout the year, the group organizes awareness campaigns, fundraising drives, and outreach events that connect students directly with cancer-related causes and the communities affected by them. In addition to raising funds, these initiatives deepen the understanding of the patient journey. From diagnosis to treatment and survivorship, the significance of the human element behind oncological care and disease experience cannot be understated.

SITC's annual flagship event is a highly anticipated hockey game pitting medical students against physicians, serving as both a friendly competition and a major fundraising effort for sarcoma cancer research. It brings together students, clinicians, families, and community members in a shared space that blends advocacy with school spirit, turning awareness into action. At the 2026 game, SITC raised $166,420 for their cause. 

In many ways, Stick It To Cancer is a quintessential example of UCalgary medical student life: collaborative, purpose-driven, and grounded in the belief that even as learners, students can contribute meaningfully to the communities they will one day serve.

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SITC annual hockey game 2026, featuring UofC mascot Rex O'Saurus! 

What campus life adds to medical training

It is easy to misconstrue student clubs as extracurricular noise or busy-work in an already crowded schedule. In reality, they function more like parallel training grounds.

Cultural groups anchor identity. Advocacy clubs shape systems thinking. Interest groups guide career curiosity. Service initiatives connect students to real communities. And campaigns like Stick It To Cancer promote tangible outreach, fundraising, and patient-centred engagement.

Healthcare workers carry the unique responsibility of wearing multiple hats, some explicitly taught through curriculum, and others shaped through the hidden curriculum: learning how to be a professional, a scholar, a communicator, and an innovator beyond what is written in textbooks. UCalgary’s student-driven diverse campus environment delicately balances both curriculums at once. It is where students begin to practice leadership, teamwork, advocacy, and adaptability long before they are formally assessed on them.

With vibrant campus life, our understanding of medicine is bolstered beyond the classroom, one student-led initiative at a time.

Acknowledgements 

Special thanks to leaders from student groups for providing information and consent to release media. Thank you to members of the Calgary Medical Students’ Association for reviewing this article!