Friday, February 7, 2014

Ice Storm Hits Philadelphia

We've been without power at our Elkins Park campus since the monster ice storm hit the greater Philadelphia area Tuesday night. Many of us are still without power at home as well, including me. The local electric supplier is telling us we should expect to see electricity restored at Elkins Park by late tonight, but that is still just an estimate. We're keeping our fingers crossed that they are correct. In the meantime, I want to take the opportunity to thank our students, faculty, consultants and staff for their perseverance during this weather emergency. I especially want to thank those folks who have kept the clinical operations going smoothly at The Eye Institute and our satellites. As a health science teaching institution,Salus has a dual mission; as an educator of professionals-in-training and as a health care resource to the community. When making decisions on how to operationalize our dual mission student education and safety are always at the core of the decision making process.  We understand that many of our students, faculty and staff are still without electricity, internet, etc. and that creates a major inconvenience for those effected.  We also realize that exam and class schedules are effected as well. We will make it through all this just fine but it's going to take some additional patience and perseverance. As we move into next week, we all need to remain flexible and keep smiling. Academic and clinic schedules will be adjusted accordingly and we'll get the job done. These types of experiences tend to be bonding experiences for those who work through them collectively. Thankfully, we purchased a notification system a couple of months ago that enabled us to put out text, email and cell messages to everyone that signed up.  While not perfect, due to the nature of the emergency we've been able to keep folks informed based on the information we have. 


That's just the nature of the beast. So, thank you ALL for being understanding, professional and flexible. We all learn from these experiences so next time something like this happens our response can be even better. Hoping everyone is safe, warm and ready to hit it hard next week.

1 comment:

  1. When you work your way through difficult times as an organization, it builds team spirit and confidence. Out of failure comes valuable lessons that need to be shared with the organization. Failure helps us fight complacency. And recognizing that we had difficulty in the past creates humility. We know we will have difficulty in the future, and we prepare ourselves for it.
    A paragraph from "The Wawa way"

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