Members of the Detroit area’s Arab and Chaldean-American community gathered at a festive autumn dinner in the home of Drs. Riad and Ghada Khatib to award scholarship recipients from the ibn Sina Endowed Scholarship Fund. Donors were able to meet School of Medicine Dean John Crissman and congratulate student winners.

The evening featured authentic Middle-Eastern dishes prepared by members of the planning committee that has, in recent years, produced a series of successful fund-raising events for the endowment campaign. Physicians, medical students and other members of the Arab and Chaldean-American community raised $200,000 for the scholarship fund, named in honor of ibn Sina, the influential Arabic physician and scholar whose writings provided the basis of medical knowledge throughout the Arab world and in European universities for centuries.

The evening’s highlight was the introduction of three current School of Medicine students designated as the first ibn Sina scholarship recipients, based on their academic records, service and demonstrated interest in Arab and Chaldean culture.

WSU alum, Dr. Sammy Khatib, ’99, chats with his father, Dr. Riad Khatib, and Associate Dean Robert Frank, MD, ’73. Sammy Khatib, currently a resident in internal medicine at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, arranged an overnight visit to Detroit in order to attend. As a medical student during the late 1990s, he was a founding member of the Arab and Chaldean Medical Students Association.