Summer is Flying By: Week of August 4th

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

I can’t believe it’s August already! This summer is flying by. Orientation begins in just two short weeks when we will, once again, welcome our largest incoming class. It’s an exciting time as we’ve made some changes to include moving our traditional White Coat Ceremony from October to the end of Orientation Week. Not only have we changed the date, but we’ve changed the venue to reflect the stature of the event as well as the size. This year’s White Coat ceremony will be held in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts at 2 p.m. on August 17. This year's guest speaker is Vice Admiral Forrest Faison, Surgeon General of the Navy, who I know will have a great message for our new students. I’m hoping many of you can join us for this important occasion.

The Osborne College of Audiology has been conducting Summer Workshops in which many attendees are international students who are advancing their education through our AuD Online Bridge Program. We provide this very unique program because in some countries a master’s degree is the highest level of education required to practice as an audiologist, but the Doctor of Audiology (AuD) degree allows interested providers to deepen their clinical skillset and expand their scope of practice. 

Our Speech-Language Pathology Department co-hosted a special continuing education workshop with The Hanen Centre, a Canadian-based charitable organization, entitled, “It Takes Two to Talk – The Hanen Program for Parents of Children with Language Delay.” The three-day program focused on the role parents play in their child’s early language intervention and how speech-language pathologists can facilitate parents’ involvement.

As a reminder, the CityLife clinic is now open at The Eye Institute (TEI) and is continuing to enroll new patients. If you have a chance to stop by TEI, check out their new site as well as how nice the whole building now looks. I know you’ll be able to find a parking space as we’ve added 70 new spaces to our lot.

For those of you who are walking around the Elkins Park campus, you’ll notice some minor construction going on in the West building. This is secondary to a water leak we experienced a couple of weeks ago. To that end, we anticipate the work will be completed within the next couple of weeks allowing us to open up areas that have been closed since the incident occurred. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Finally, it looks like it’s going to be another nice weekend.  I encourage you all to get out and enjoy the sunshine (with sunscreen, of course) and have some fun.  Please be safe and stay hydrated.  

Have a wonderful weekend!