Alumni Highlight: 2024 Medal of Merit Winner, Dr. Ralph Crew, ‘81

The Heritage College Medal of Merit is awarded to graduates who have achieved distinction in their chosen field of medicine through commitment and exemplary leadership. This is the college’s most prestigious award and the Society of Alumni and Friends recognized Ralph Crew, D.O., at the Ohio Osteopathic Symposium as its 2024 Medal of Merit winner.

Dr. Crew is from the college’s second graduating class, the class of 1981, and spent two years post-graduation helping the rural poor at a migrant farmworker clinic in Fremont, Ohio. In 1990, he began practicing ophthalmology in Big Rapids, Michigan, a town of 10,000 that had never had an ophthalmologist. It was an underserved community and Dr. Crew was the only eye surgeon for a radius of 50 miles.

While working in his practice, he began commuting to Metropolitan Hospital in Grand Rapids to staff their Osteopathic Ophthalmology Residency Clinic and eventually became residency director. He started going on ophthalmic mission trips in the late 1990's and has completed 42 trips so far, often taking residents who learned MSICS, a special technique for doing cataract surgery in the 3rd world. His mission work was recently highlighted in the May issue of The Ophthalmologist

Over Dr. Crew’s long and distinguished career, his desire to give back to his community, continued contributions to medical education and time spent mentoring the next generation of doctors models the tenets of osteopathic leadership, the distinguishing characteristic of any Medal of Merit award winner.

If you want to lift up a fellow classmate and recognize their contributions, the ballot for our 2025 alumni awards are open and we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to nominate via this link: 2025 Alumni Award Ballot.