Back from Budapest: Week of July 20th

Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,

It’s great to be back at Salus after my week in Budapest. While I learned a great deal and really enjoyed the city, it’s always great to get back home where there is a lot going on, as usual!

I’d like to welcome our second-year optometry class back to campus. I know that you’ve already jumped into classes and clinical studies, which I’m sure has been both challenging and exciting. Your summer will go quickly! 

Starting Saturday, July 21st, the Osborne College of Audiology (OCA) will host its 6th annual Hands-On-Summer Workshop, with the first one on "Electrophysiology in Audiology" followed by "Vestibular and Balance Disorders: Assessment and Rehabilitation". OCA's international AuD-Bridge students will be on-campus attending these workshops along with local audiologists. This should be a very rewarding experience for all involved. 

Congratulations to Dr. Jonette Owen, who was elected as the VP of Education for the Pennsylvania Academy of Audiology and Dr. Pienkowski for his article on "New Advances in Electrophysiology for Clinical and Basic Investigation," with his co-authors, to be published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. Our faculty just keep knocking this out of the park!

Faculty and students from the Speech-Language Pathology, Occupational Therapy and Blindness and Low vision Studies programs from the College of Education and Rehabilitation participated in an Interprofessional Education workshop focusing on investigating universal design, a broad spectrum of ideas meant to produce buildings, products and environments that are accessible to people with and without disabilities in both our local and surrounding communities. This effort speaks to everything we believe at Salus about the integration of health services to benefit our patients and communities. Well done! 

On Tuesday and Wednesday members of our faculty, staff, student body and Board of Trustees got together for our first Scenario Planning workshop. The goal of these workshops is to develop scenarios that address what I call “alternate futures” that may affect higher education, healthcare, healthcare education, our student populations and other extrinsic forces that we need to be prepared to proactively address in the near and short-term. Once these scenarios have been fully developed, we’ll use them to inform our strategic thinking and ultimately our strategic plan as we continue to evolve as a premier health sciences university. I will be keeping you all up-to-date as this process continues.

Every year The Chronicle of Higher Education selects colleges and universities that are “Great Colleges to Work For.” I am extremely happy to tell you that we were selected amongst that special group based on our compensation and benefits package. Congratulations to Maura Keenan and her Human Resources staff as well as our senior and mid-level faculty and staff leadership teams.

Finally, it looks like it’s going to be a nice summer weekend - at least the first half of it. I don’t know what your plans are but on Saturday morning, but I’ll be participating in the New Jersey State Triathlon at Lake Mercer County Park. It should be a nice day for a swim, bike and run! 

You all be safe and watch out for one another and have a great weekend!

Mike