Otis Ferguson III, M.D.

Otis Ferguson III, M.D., Class of 1988,  is a board-certified ophthalmologist who has been a physician in the Detroit region for more than 28 years. He is the only Black ophthalmologist with a private practice in the city of Detroit.

He first attended Howard University, where he observed Black physicians caring for people. At a recruitment fair on the campus, he met Marjorie Edwards, the director of Minority Recruitment for the Wayne State University School of Medicine. She interviewed him , and he soon began his medical education at WSU, completing his residency in Ophthalmology at the Kresge Eye Institute in Detroit.

At Wayne State, he joined the Black Medical Association and inherited Charles Vincent, M.D., and Charles Whitten, M.D., as his mentors. He met his wife, Patricia (Brown) Ferguson, M.D. ’88, FACOG, , who is an obstetrician/gynecologist. While a medical student, he attended a function where he met Deidra Holloway, M.D., a Black ophthalmologist who had completed her Ophthalmology residency at WSU in 1978. She invited him to her office and he fell in love with the field. He was later invited by Black ophthalmologist William Lucas, M.D. ’77, to shadow him and work in his office.

Dr. Ferguson has made it his mission to educate medical students on the specialty of Ophthalmology and encourage them to enter the profession. He mentors high school students though pipelines established to expose students to medical education and professions. One of those students, his daughter, has become an ophthalmologist. Another is in the Ophthalmology program in the WSU School of Medicine.

Dr. Ferguson is also an ordained minister. He received his master’s degree in Divinity from Ashland Theological Seminar in Ohio and was ordained at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.