115th Commencement: Week of October 12, 2018

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

Today marks the end of an exceptionally eventful week at Salus. Yesterday marked the 115th Commencement ceremony at the University. For the first time, our Fall Commencement included graduates from all four of our colleges. We bestowed doctoral and master's degrees to over 65 students in the professions of Physician Assistant Studies, Audiology, Blindness and Low Vision Studies, Biomedicine, Occupational Therapy, Public Health and for our international students, Clinical Optometry with an International Advanced Studies Certificate. Special thanks to family members, significant others and friends for supporting all of our graduates and attending yesterday’s ceremony. I also want to thank those Board of Trustee members who took the time to participate. Congratulations to everyone!

Preceding commencement on Wednesday evening, the Physician Assistant program held its traditional Long White Coat Ceremony, along with the honoring the PA Alumnus of the Year Award, Jennifer Heibel, MMS'15, PA-C. Since graduating in 2015, Jennifer has already established herself as a skilled and passionate provider at the Mayo Clinic where she currently works. She has become an expert in palliative care and has even taken a very creative idea and launched a foundation to better care for those in need of that type of care called “ReMEmber” which is pronounced, “Remember Me”. I invite you to read more about Jennifer’s accomplishment.

Victor Bray, PhD, associate professor, Osborne College of Audiology, was elected to a second term as Secretary of the National Academies of Practice during their 2019 Fall Council Meeting in Grand Rapids, Mich. Dr. Bray’s term will begin following the 2019 forum in March. We are very proud of this accomplishment as it continues to maintain the Osborne College of Audiology on the national stage.

Rebecca Blaha, AuD, clinical educator at PEI, was interviewed by KYW for a story about over the counter hearing aids. I encourage all of you to take a couple of minutes to listen to this.

On Sunday, we’ll be holding our quarterly meeting of the Salus Alumni Association Board. I’m looking forward to bringing board members up to speed on all the great things going on at the university, to include our new scholarship initiatives.

A couple of reminders for you:

• Next week we’ll be holding our Young Alumni event at Yard’s Brewery on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to celebrate the Salus University’s 10th anniversary. This event is open to everyone so I encourage you to join us for what should be a fun evening.
• The Looking Out for Kids annual charity fundraiser will be November 3 at Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue. This event is always fun and as most of you know, proceeds all go to our Looking Out For Kids charity, which has been expanded to not only include vision care but now also includes support for audiology and speech-language pathology services. Please get your tickets now.

Finally, it’s going be a nice fall weekend around here so I hope you have a chance to get out and enjoy the nice weather. Be safe and look out for each other!

Mike