China Edition: Week of February 22nd

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

Greetings from Guangzhou, China where Dr. Melissa Vitek and I are in the middle of what has been an informative, productive and uplifting trip to many of the institutions we have been partnering with over the past few years. I’m going to try and make this a little more abridged than my usual updates since I have to improvise a bit to get this out given the restrictions on the use of Google over here.  

For those of you who don’t know, China does not recognize optometry as the doctoral level profession we do in the States. Here it is practiced on multiple levels from a technical certificate to a PhD. We have been working with several programs in different cities to educate many of their faculty, with many of them earning our Master in Science Degree in Clinical Optometry (MSc) or going on to complete our International Advanced Placement Optometry Degree (APOD) program which awards these students our Doctor of Optometry degree after they complete the MSc degree and three additional years at Salus.  It’s a long haul but it gives these very motivated and talented professionals a great baseline to return to their institutions to implement what they’ve learned and pass it along to others. We’ve seen evidence of this on our trip where our graduates have been promoted to dean and director positions where they can begin to influence how optometry is taught and ultimately practiced here. Clearly, it’s a very long road, but you have to start someplace and we are playing a key role in moving the optometric profession forward here. Our discussions this week have also touched upon some of the ideas we’ve discussed during our Scenario Planning initiative to include the possibility of developing some online continuing education programs using secure connections as well as some hybrid certificate programs. Much work will need to be done, but I’m thinking if we can do this for China, we should be able to do it at home as well!  

Today we leave for Shanghai where we’ll meet with our counterparts at the China Optometry and Optical Association as well as host a Graduate Reception for over forty of our China alumni. Then it’s off to Nanchong for another university visit and meetings and then home in the beginning of next week.

Closer to the home front in Philadelphia, work continues on for the Centennial Celebration. You all should have received invitations so I hope you’re making your plans to attend! If not, you can do it right here.

We’ve launched a new podcast series that’s available on our website if you click here. The first podcast discusses seeing eye dogs and the process that goes into training them and the second one discusses what tinnitus is all about. I recommend you check these out. 

I know the week has been somewhat shortened by the snow storm so many of you will be doing some catch-up this weekend. Stay safe and look out for one another!

Mike