New Appointments & Student Involvement: Week of September 24, 2018

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

It’s been a busy and exciting week at Salus. 

On Monday, we welcomed our Board of Trustees to campus for their quarterly meeting. During each quarterly meeting we try to highlight one of our academic programs and this time Dr. Lauren Sponseller gave a very comprehensive overview of our Occupational Therapy program. These presentations provide a great opportunity to inform Salus board members about all the creative and innovative things happening in each of our programs.

Throughout the week our graduating Physician Assistant students presented their Capstone projects on a variety of topics. Students, faculty, and staff were all invited to attend. I had the opportunity to sit in on a couple of the presentations, which were exceptional.  Congratulations to all of our capstone participants for a job well done!

Speaking of graduation, please put October 11th on your calendar for our Fall Commencement at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Center City at 2:00 p.m. For the first time, ever, every college will be represented at the ceremony. We’ll also be awarding an honorary degree to Dr. Janice Scharre followed by her keynote address, which I’m certain will be insightful and inspiring.

In the Pennsylvania College of Optometry, Holly Myers, OD '86 has assumed the role of Chief, Suite 1 Primary Care at The Eye Institute. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Myers on her achievement!

On Wednesday, Salus was represented at Arcadia University’s Health & Wellness Fair and Representative Pam DeLissio’s Senior Expo at the Roxborough Memorial Hospital. I highly encourage you to volunteer for these events as it’s a great way to be involved in the community and spread the word about Salus.

This week we saw some positive movement on the Optometric Scope of Practice bill that’s moving through the Pennsylvania legislature. On Thursday, the bill was passed by the state Senate. Now the bill will go to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for a vote. It will be important for all of our optometry students from Pennsylvania to contact their state representatives to help ensure we have their support for this important piece of legislation. We’ll continue to work closely with the Pennsylvania Optometric Association to get pertinent information to legislators concerning how we train optometrists at Salus.

Finally, thanks to Dr. Stephanie Leburg for her Grand Rounds presentation on “Initial Parafoveal Scotomas, Optic Disc Hemorrhages and Normal Tension Glaucoma this morning at TEI. It was extremely informative!

It looks like we may actually have a nice weekend so if you have a chance, get outside and enjoy the nice fall weather. Be safe and look out for one another!

Mike

Fall is Almost Here: Week of September 21st

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

Hello from a cloudy, but cooler Elkins Park! Another busy week at Salus.

Yesterday, The Eye Institute staff was treated to a lunch as part of the Salus 10-year celebration. We’ll do a similar thing on the Elkins Park campus in just a few minutes. All faculty and staff are invited to join in on the fun at the Hafter Center gym from 11:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. today to celebrate Salus’ 10th.

Later today, Salus staff will attend the Stand Down South Jersey – A Veteran’s Screenings to provide screenings to homeless veterans from the New Jersey and Philadelphia area. This is part of our ongoing efforts to care for veteran’s in the greater Philadelphia area.

Please join me in congratulating Jennifer Heibel, MMS ’15, PA-C, our Physician Assistant Alumna of the Year! Ms. Heibel serves as part of the palliative medicine team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, caring for patients with terminal illness. Last year, she founded a non-profit service, “ReMEmber” (pronounced Remember Me), which provides guidance to hospice patients in composing letters and other personalized projects as a gift to loved ones so as to “capture an unwavering expression of love that lasts beyond the final breath.” We’re so very proud of her – and all of our gifted alumni! Join us in celebrating Ms. Heibel on October 10th at the PA Alumna of the Year Award Reception.

 

In a brief, but important ceremony last Thursday afternoon, 16 students from the Master of Occupational Therapy (MSOT) Class of 2019 were inducted into Pi Theta Epsilon Delta Mu chapter, the national honor society for Occupational Therapy (OT) students. This was the fourth induction ceremony for the University’s chapter, recognized by the Association of College Honor Societies, and a program of the American Occupational Therapy Foundation. Faculty from across programs came to watch and celebrate with the inductees as they pledged their new society.

On Monday, our Board of Trustees will be on campus for their quarterly meeting. Our volunteer board members unselfishly give us a great deal of time, expertise and energy to help Salus continue to innovate and grow, in addition to supporting us financially. Please extend a hearty welcome to them if you see them walking around campus.

If you remember my talk during orientation I mentioned that I will sometimes try to make my weekly update somewhat provocative. The following may or may not be to be considered provocative to you but I’m warning you, just in case. I wanted to talk about appropriate dress while in graduate school.

I am a little concerned that our idea of dressing in the manner becoming a professional student has gotten a bit lax in the classroom and lab setting. I certainly don’t mind if students wear jeans and comfortable shoes to class and lab, however, coming to class in athletic gear (running shorts, yoga pants, athletic tops) is not in the spirit of the dress code guidelines. Performing a Google search prior to venturing into this topic I found mixed opinions on this. A couple resonated with me that I would like to share with you.

What I found was that most experts agree your appearance says a lot about you and that you are treated based on how you are perceived by others. You may think it doesn’t matter how you dress for classes and that wearing athletic gear is acceptable since everyone else does the same thing. One author suggested that if you dress like a college kid, people will continue to treat you like one. If you dress sloppily, people might think you are disorganized or that you simply do not care. The author points out that this is supported by research on social behavior from graduate students, just like you. The bottom line is to dress appropriately for your setting and remember, it is always better to overdress than under-dress! Most references suggested clean and tidy denim pants (jeans) and skirts, capri pants or shorts (excluding short shorts) and athletic shoes that are clean and in good repair would be considered appropriate for classroom and lab settings. I tend to agree.

I’m going to leave the final decision to you, as you are all adults. Nevertheless, I felt you should know my thoughts on this. Please do not be bashful about providing feedback to me on this – I would like to know what you think and would certainly be happy to hear any dissenting (and supporting) opinions on this.

This weekend we transition from summer to fall. I hope you can get out and enjoy the nice weather because before we know it, we’ll be talking about snow! Have a safe and relaxing weekend!

Mike

Greetings from Sunny San Diego: Week of September 14th

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

Greetings from sunny San Diego. I apologize for getting this out a little later than normal but every once in a while, I get to go back to my former life as a Naval Officer and this was one of those times. I had the distinct honor and pleasure to be the guest speaker at a retirement ceremony for Captain David Murphy, a physician that worked with me in the Navy for many years. It’s always great to put on the uniform and honor those who serve. As an added bonus I had the opportunity to go for a nice run along the water early this morning which helped to set the tone for the wonderful day that it was. I’ll be back on a plane to our Philadelphia humidity early tomorrow morning. 

Closer to home, I’d like to congratulate Dr. Lauren Sponseller who was presented with the Making a Difference Award from the Breastfeeding Resource Center in recognition of her commitment of time and generous support of that organization. This show of appreciation is so well deserved - Lauren is a great example of service in action and we should all wish her a hardy "Congrats" for her efforts!

When you have a moment between studies, make sure to check out the new art exhibit hanging in the D’Arrigo Family Gallery in the Hafter Student Community Center. The show exhibits member work from the Summer 2018 Cooperative MamaCITA - an award-winning arts collective that provides its members a collective voice within the art world. All members are professional artists and mothers. The show runs from September 5 through October 28, with an opening reception today, September 14 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.  Thanks to our resident artist, Elynne Rosenfeld for making all this happen!

The PCO Private Practice Club (PPC) invited Dr. Kristin O’Brien to talk to students on Thursday evening about her journey from student to doctor and how she not only deciphered what she was going to do with her career, but more importantly, why.  It was extremely well-received.  Thanks to Dr. O’Brien for taking the time to help educate our students.

Buckets for Blindness, a 3v3 basketball tournament to raise money for the Foundation Fighting for Blindness is Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the Hafter Center and is open to students across all programs. The cost is $5/person.

As summer wrapped up, the University's Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) and Occupational Therapy (OT) students spent a morning at Arcadia University sharing information about their respective professions with middle school students from the local Philadelphia community. Both groups of students provided an excellent overview and a variety of hands-on activities to engage the kids.

We are extremely proud to announce Rosemary Connors, anchor and reporter for NBC10 News in Philadelphia and Emmy award recipient, will again co-host Salus University's 12th annual “Looking Out for Kids” (LOFK) charity fundraiser on Saturday, November 3, 2018 at the Hilton City Avenue in Philadelphia. This is the fourth time Connors has graciously hosted the event.  Invitations have gone out so we hope many of you will join us for this important charity fundraising event.

Finally, our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by Hurricane Florence.  We still don’t know the extent of all the damage but we want all of our students, alumni and friends who might have been impacted by the storm to know that we’re here to support you and will keep you all in our thoughts and prayers.

Have a safe and restful weekend.

Mike

Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board of Trustee members and Friends,

It’s been a really hot and steamy week in Philadelphia and all up and down the East Coast. It’s also been a week to welcome back all those returning students from rotations or summer breaks. It’s really fun to walk around campus and feel the energy everyone brings to campus this time of the year! Our goal is to keep that energy level going throughout the year!!!

I’d like for all of our students, but especially our new ones, to take full advantage of the healthcare services we provide at Salus. To that end, I’d like each new student to make appointments at The Eye Institute, Pennsylvania Ear Institute and Speech-Language Institute.  For those returning students, if you haven’t already done this, please make the time to get it done. Even if you don’t feel like you need to have your eyes and ears checked or you don’t have any speech, swallowing or associated problems, it’s a great idea to learn a little about what your colleagues at Salus are doing. While you may not be able to get a same day appointment, please be patient and schedule something soon. It doesn’t cost you anything but time unless you need glasses, contacts or some other device - and those are provided close to “cost."  Your visit will allow your colleagues to experience patient contacts while you learn about their professions. 

While November doesn’t seem all that close right now, it will be here right before we know it. To that end, I’d like to remind everyone that the twelfth annual "Looking Out For Kids" Charity Fundraiser will be held at the Philadelphia Hilton, City Line Avenue on November 3^rd. Building on last year’s successful event this year’s will be even bigger and better!  We will be honoring Donna Frisby-Greenwood with our third annual Lighthouse Award. Ms. Frisby-Greenwood is the first president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia. Her work with the children of Philadelphia over the years has made a significant impact in their lives.  

This week students in our Physician Assistant (PA) program began the first in a series of three “The Art of Observation” workshops at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of their Physical Diagnosis 1 course. Half of the Class of 2020 and several faculty attended the gallery sessions yesterday and the other half is scheduled for later in September. Two museum educators are conducting the sessions, which are highly interactive, and involve individual and group exercises. PA faculty are also involved in the sessions in order to bring a clinical/medical perspective to the workshops. The curriculum in the first in the series covers Observing & Describing; the second session in the Spring will cover Interpreting, and the last session in the Summer will cover Empathy, Perspective Taking and Recognizing Bias. The art museum program was originally developed for Penn medical students, and is based on a Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero.  It’s great to see this innovative education model being leveraged for our students!

The Salus Scoop will be held from 12:30 – 2:30 P.M. later today in the Hafter Center gymnasium. It will be a great way for students (especially new students) to get to know clubs and organizations on campus. There will be FREE FOOD, including some pretty awesome food trucks, lots of games and prizes.  

Also, today, Dr. Eric Branda, the Director of Product Management for Sivantos, Inc. who has provided audiological, technical and product training support in the area of audiology for over 20 years will be defending his PhD dissertation in W400 at 1:00 PM.  Dr. Branda earned his audiology degree from the Arizona School of Health Sciences and has been working on his PhD at Salus for the past few years.His dissertation is titled,  “Effects of Working Memory on the Degree of Benefit for Speech Understanding in Noise with Binaural Wireless Beamforming”.  Even if you’re just curious as to what the name of his dissertation actually means, I encourage you to attend!

Did anyone see a camera crew on campus the last few days?  We're working on a virtual tour of campus, and can't wait to share it with you when its complete!  So if you see a camera crew, smile!

For all of our Jewish friends, I’d like to wish you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year or the traditional “Shanah Tovah” as you prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah Sunday evening.  May this year bring good health, happiness, prosperity and for our students, good grades!  

Have a great weekend. It it looks like it will certainly be much cooler than the rest of the week. Please get outside, exercise, relax (I purposefully used those words in the same sentence) and have fun. Looking forward to seeing you back on campus ready to learn on Monday!

Mike