Disengaging and Recharging: Week of July 29th, 2022

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

Greetings from a warm and muggy Elkins Park campus where we are wrapping up the summer semester and preparing to welcome new students later next month. It’s been a busy final week as we welcomed our Pennsylvania State Legislature’s Education Committee for a tour of our campus and The Eye Institute yesterday. It was an honor to show them what we do and to thank them for their continued support! We also bid farewell to our Master of Clinical Optometry students from Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan who have been on campus for a month to hone their skills in speech-language pathology and audiology.

Here are some other items of interest for you:

NEW PA DIRECTOR: Rachel Ditoro, MSPAS, PA-C, is our new director of the Physician Assistant Studies (PA) program in the College of Health Science, Education and Rehabilitation (CHER), effective July 1, 2022. She understands many patients have been to healthcare providers and have walked away feeling dissatisfied after their encounter. As a result, her ultimate goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen with the PA students trained at Salus University. Read more about Rachel here.

ASCO PRESIDENCY: Congratulations to Melissa Trego, OD ‘04, Resident ‘09, PhD, dean of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Salus University, for ascending to the presidency of the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO), the academic leadership organization committed to advancing optometric education and research to enhance the health and well-being of the public. Dr. Trego is only the fourth PCO/Salus educator to have served ASCO in that capacity. For details, click here.

MANAGING COLLEGIATE FINANCES: Sallie Mae’s “How Americans Pay for College” study found that 44 percent of surveyed families did not use scholarships to help with undergraduate tuition costs. Of that, only 6 percent said they didn’t need additional funds. Check out this story about how Salus strives to ensure its students are aware of not only internal scholarships but external scholarship opportunities available to them as well.

FINAL THOUGHTS: As we close out another academic semester, I’m reminded of how quickly time goes. Summer is about half over with our Fall semester starting in just a few short weeks. As we prepare for orientation and the excitement that always accompanies the beginning of a new academic year, this presents a great chance to disengage a bit and recharge both mentally and physically. Whether you’re a student, faculty, or staff, we all need to take a break every so often to catch our breath. Now is a great time to regroup and reconnect with family and friends. Once orientation begins, everyone will be going 100 miles per hour again between lectures, labs, clinics, and travel.

As you prepare for the weekend, please also remember that Covid numbers continue to increase in our region so it’s important to remain vigilant as you go about your daily activities. Continue to follow CDC masking guidelines and test if you’re not feeling well. As always, stay hydrated, wear sunscreen when outside and continue to look out for one another.

Enjoy the time off! Together we are SALUS STRONG!

Mike