Dear Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,
Good morning on a beautiful Fall morning from our Elkins Park campus! It’s hard to believe that October is almost gone with Halloween just a week away. As you will see below, our students, faculty and staff have had an extremely busy week between routine classes, both in-person and virtually, labs and clinics as well as some very special events:
MSCHE SITE VISIT: After countless hours were spent preparing our accreditation self-study report, we will host our site visit team virtually next week. Thanks to all who participated in preparing our self-study and to our steering committee and standard representatives who will be participating in question and answer sessions. You should all be very proud of your efforts in demonstrating how Salus meets its accreditation requirements. A special thank you to co-chair Brooke Kruemmling for leading our efforts.
NEW DEI SERIES KICKOFF: I hope you got a chance to attend or watch live-streamed on Instagram our new event series for the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, DEI Speaks! This series seeks to explore and share with the University community, diverse topics, speakers and events that will illuminate differences in cultural perspectives, sharpen understanding of interconnectedness, and provide educational enrichment of the highest quality. The inaugural event, co-sponsored by our very own Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO), was held this week and featured Paula Harmon Boone, OD, Director of the National Optometric Association (NOA) “Visioning the Future” HBCU Mentorship Program and NOA Trustee for Region I, who talked about “Diverse Representation Matters in Healthcare.”
COMMENCEMENT FOLLOW-UP: If you haven’t already had a chance, check our website for stories about last week’s commencement ceremony at the Kimmel Center, our Graduate Awards Luncheon and the Physician Assistant (PA) Studies program’s Long White Coat ceremony and a feature on one of our legacy families.
SOCIAL MEDIA STAR: Shanae Johnson, an Admissions officer at Salus before leaving at the end of September, has always liked to cook. So TikTok videos were a way for Shanae to share some of what she learned about making her favorite dishes and recipes. And now, she’s a social media star. Read more about Shanae’s journey here.
STAFF SPOTLIGHT: This week’s Staff Spotlight is on Caren Cremen, a digital communications specialist in our Communications department. Caren loves seeing student-generated content on our social media sites and part of her role is reaching out to students to share that content. Read more about Caren here.
SUPPORT THE SAA: Come support the Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) at its “Dine and Donate” fundraiser from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, at White Horse Coffee and Creamery, 700 W. Ave, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.
AUDIOLOGY GRAND ROUNDS: Don’t forget about today’s Audiology Grand Rounds today at 12:15 p.m. Presenters Zachary LaBarth and Carleigh Leman will talk about the “Sudden Onset of Tinnitus, Hyperacusis and Hearing Loss." Click here to join the meeting.
RESIDENT CLASS OF 2022: This week’s new resident feature is on Elizabeth Marunde, OD, ‘22Resident, who decided at an early age to become an optometrist. Read more about Dr. Marunde here.
MEDAL WINNER FEATURE: The final winner spotlight in our 2021 Presidential Medal of Honor series is John J. Fitzgerald III, DO, FACOG, associate director of the Physician Assistant (PA) Studies program. Read more about Dr. Fitzgerald's honor in receiving the award and how much the recognition means to him here.
FINAL THOUGHTS: I’d like to close this week’s update with both a thank you and a reminder. I’d like to take this opportunity to once again thank Dr. Paula Boone for spending the day with PCO students and faculty to share her story of success as a Black optometrist leading the charge to provide excellent eye care where ever she was. For those of you who didn’t have the opportunity to meet Paula, you really missed an opportunity to remind us how inequities in healthcare impact thousands of people annually. Her message spoke to the core of what we are trying to accomplish at Salus – expand opportunities for all people, but especially Black, Hispanic and other people of color to become healthcare professionals so they can help to alleviate some of the systemic challenges currently resident in American healthcare delivery.
Our current Summer Enrichment Program has been a great first step in providing opportunities for students to excel in our optometry program. I’d like to see this expanded, university-wide as we gain more insights into how effective this program has been. Thanks to a grant we received from National Vision, Inc. last year, we have been able to energize our current program. Working together, we need to garner additional support so we can effectively build upon the success this program currently enjoys. At Salus, we’ve always led the way with our innovative and progressive clinical programs and now I believe it’s our time to take the lead in providing additional opportunities FOR students of color, whose path to becoming a healthcare provider is challenging, at best. Let’s put our collective efforts together to help realize this goal.
As you prepare for the weekend, please continue to be vigilant with wearing your face mask, social distancing and washing your hands. Boosters have now been approved for all of the vaccines so, if you are eligible (and most of us are as healthcare providers, including our students), I would strongly encourage each of you to consider getting one.
Be safe, please continue to look out for one another and remain SALUS STRONG!
Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment