Greetings on a cold, yet bright Philadelphia Friday! I hope everyone enjoyed the rare snow day we had earlier in the week. No one would guess we’re in March!
You didn’t see a “Weekly Update” from me last week as we were traveling in Japan and China. As many of you know, Google and thus Gmail, does not work in China, hence my lack of update last week. So let me tell you a little bit about our trip.
Drs. Scharre, Vitek and I had the opportunity to do an externship visit at our site at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan. This is a very special place for me as I actually helped to facilitate this externship site when I was there in the early 2000’s as the commanding officer of the faculty. My team had the privilege of doing the majority of the design work for the new Naval Hospital that I had the opportunity to open when I was the Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy in 2013. The hospital our externs practice in today is only 5 years old and a state-of-the art facility. While there, we had the opportunity to meet with our current extern, Kathryn Ordonez (Class of 2018) who really appeared to be enjoying her experience over there. In addition to seeing lots of patients she was enjoying the Okinawan culture and staying in shape by biking to work every day!
The next phase in our travels was to Shanghai, China where we held a reception to recognize many of our Chinese alumni as well as introduce prospective students to the University. The event was extremely well attended. It was fun to see alumni and also to meet some of the new students who will be coming our way next year. An added bonus was that the weather in Shanghai was uncharacteristically warm - 75 degrees and sunny. Running in shorts and a tee shirt in March is always a good thing!
As always, it’s good to be home. One of the first things I noticed was that we’re making great progress on what will be the new Lorraine Lombardi classroom on the 3rd floor. Demolition on one side is complete and the framing has commenced. It’s always great to see new infrastructure that will be used to support our academic activities. This classroom will seat over 300+ people allowing us to really leverage interprofessional education at Salus.
The next stop of the Lombardi Farewell CE tour is in Pittsburgh on March 11th. The Western Pennsylvania Optometric Association will be hosting the event which I’m certain will be a great success, as all the others have been.
As part of our outreach to local political officials, today we will be hosting State Senator Sharif Street and Representative Isabella Fitzgerald at The Eye Institute to show them what we do for the local community as well as to explain all the great clinical education experiences our students receive at TEI. As the PA legislature looks at expanding optometric scope of practice, it’s important for them to understand the high quality education all of our optometrists receive at Salus.
So, this weekend looks like it will be cold, but no snow! I encourage you all to get out and enjoy the good, albeit, cold weather.
Mike
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