DOHA, Qatar, May 8 -- In a gesture that brought the audience to its feet with rousing applause, Qatar's first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, donned a white physician's coat and clutched a sleek black leather doctor's bag during the first commencement for Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q).

The physician's traditional elements were gifts to the Sheikha from the inaugural class of 15 newly minted M.D.s, who received their degrees today in a festive ceremony in a ballroom at the Ritz Carlton hotel. The Sheikha, wife of the Emir of Qatar His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, was a driving force in the establishment of WCMC-Q through her work with Qatar Foundation.

The graduation ceremony marked a milestone in American higher education, as Cornell University the first U.S. institution to grant its M.D. degree on foreign soil. "At a time of ongoing and even escalating world tensions, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar is a most positive achievement far beyond the world of medical education," Cornell President David Skorton, himself a cardiologist, said in his address. And Weill Cornell Medical College Dean Antonio Gotto called the students' medical education the result of "an extraordinary partnership."

The nine women and six men in the inaugural class come from seven countries, including Bosnia, Nigeria, India and Syria. Three of the graduates were born in the U.S., while four are natives of Qatar, an oil-rich nation the size of Connecticut with a population of some 1 million, about a third of whom are citizens and the rest expatriate workers. "In today's world, education is considered a privilege," said class speaker Jehan Al Rayahi, a Qatari who will do her radiology residency at Hamad Medical Corp. in Doha. "It requires both a strong ambition and the means to pursue it. My class had both."

The graduation was attended by more than 600 guests, including Weill Cornell Board of Overseers Chairman Sanford Weill. Skorton greeted the audience first in Arabic, expressing thanks to the Sheikha, the Emir and the people of Qatar, and congratulating the graduates. Then in English he hailed the project as a bridge between the people of the U.S. and the Gulf region. He then lauded the graduates -- who, he noted, have done as well on standardized tests and in the annual residency "match" as their New York peers.

The graduates will train in a variety of fields, including family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine, neurosurgery and anesthesiology. Several will stay in Qatar for residency, while others are bound for such institutions as Johns Hopkins, NewYork-Presbyterian and the University of Minnesota.

"Lack of well-trained physicians and other medical professionals is a significant contributor to the health disparities that afflict so many parts of the world, including parts of the United States, and one that higher education is well-suited to address," Skorton said. "As these students become practitioners around the world, they have the opportunity to bring medical care to underserved populations and to encourage others to seek medical education."

Skorton noted that the Qatar location remains a work in progress; with the education component now fully realized, the college is working to expand its research capabilities with new facilities, the hiring of 18 additional faculty and a focus on such areas as gene therapy, embryonic stem cell biology, vaccine development and neurogenetics. What Skorton called "the third critical component" -- patient care -- is also under way with the building of the 400-bed Sidra Medical and Research Center, a teaching hospital, adjacent to the medical school, set to open in fall 2011.

The 15 students, Gotto said, have "helped to define, for the first time, an American medical education in a different country, a different culture, outside North America." The new M.D.s are, he said, "poised to make a great difference in global medicine."

Although the ceremony was held more than 7,000 miles away from New York, it retained the traditional trappings of Weill Cornell's New York City graduation (to be held on May 29). The new M.D.s wore bright carnelian red gowns with green trim and entered the ballroom to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance," followed by a parade of faculty in full academic regalia. Surgery professor Bakr Nour bore a new wooden mace shipped from Ithaca for the ceremony; medicine professor Nounou Taleghani performed the hooding honors, draping graduates in green velvet hoods lined in red. When the class recited the Hippocratic Oath, it used the version reworked by Weill Cornell students and faculty that made its debut in 2005. The oath pledges, in part, to "serve the highest interests of my patients through the practice of my science and my art" and "strive for justice in the care of the sick."

Founded in 2001, WCMC-Q offers a two-year premedical program in addition to four years of medical school. Cornell is one of six American universities with branches in Education City -- a campus still under construction in the desert on the outskirts of Doha -- and the only one to offer a graduate program. The others are Virginia Commonwealth (design), Texas A&M (engineering), Georgetown (foreign service), Northwestern (journalism) and Carnegie Mellon (business and computer science).

Beth Saulnier is associate editor of Cornell Alumni Magazine.