Happy Holidays! Week of December 22, 2023

 

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

There is a tradition in the U.S. Navy that the first entry into a ship’s log on New Year’s Day is entered as a poem. I adopted a version of this tradition when I arrived at Salus. Although, not the first day of the of the new year, I share this with you today as we exit 2023 and prepare to enter into a most exciting 2024:

‘Twas days before Christmas, when all through our campus,

Not a student was stirring in clinics or classes;

The finals were finished, the grades were prepared,

In hopes that an “A” soon would be there;

The students were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of healthcare danced in their heads;

At work or at play, our teams aim to be “best;”

Not surprisingly, they are always up to the test;

Preparing to join with Drexel next year

Gaining friends and new colleagues is something to cheer;

From Salus’ expertise in health, ear and eye care,

To Drexel’s vast tech and research flair;

Together we’ll create a future so bright,

A beacon of learning in education’s night;

In lecture and labs, where ideas ignite,

We’ll embrace our journey with new heights in sight;

With shared goals and dreams, our paths intertwine,

Uniting two legacies in a vision divine;

As you spend time with family and friends,

Joy and peace as the year ends;

Happy Holidays to all, with hearts light and clear,

Embracing the merger, we step into the New Year.

Wishing everyone a very safe, restful and happy holiday. Enjoy the time off. Remember that, especially this time of year, small acts of kindness are gifts we can all give. Looking forward to seeing you all back on campus SALUS STRONG in 2024!

-Mike

A Holiday Poem: Week of December 20th, 2019

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

‘Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the campus,
Not a student was stirring, especially not in classes;The finals were done, grading prepared with care, 
In hopes that an “A" soon would be there;
The students have fled to their homes far away,While faculty and staff are left here to stay;With Provost in his office and I in my space,
We have attempted to prepare for a much reduced pace;
As you all spend time with family and friends,We wish you a Happy Holiday until this vacation ends.

On a less poetic note, I would like to thank Dr. Brooke Kruemmling for organizing this week’s University Development Day.  All of the speakers were fantastic and the topics extremely relevant and timely, resulting in a great exchange of ideas and information.  It was really nice to see such robust faculty attendance at the event.

As we end this year and look towards 2020 (the year of the Optometrist) I want to thank our extraordinarily talented faculty and staff for all you’ve done for our students, patients and clients throughout the year.  I really appreciate our faculty’s candid and well-thought out comments as we recently discussed ways to make Salus even better.  It’s been a great year filled with many individual and team successes.  Next year promises to be both interesting and exciting, presenting all of us with new opportunities and challenges that will help to bring us to the next stage of excellence as a premier educational institution.  

I’d like to remind our faculty and staff to please join us for the Holiday Party in the Hafter Student Community Center today (Friday) at 1pm. I look forward to seeing everyone there and wish everyone a safe and happy holiday!

Be safe, have fun and come back with your intellectual batteries charged, ready to hit the deck running!

Mike

A Return to Campus: Week of December 13th, 2019

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

It’s great to be back on campus after spending the better part of ten days in China and Singapore with Dr. Vitek meeting with our alumni and new potential students.  While these trips provide a great deal of opportunity for us to tell folks about all the great things you’re doing here at Salus, it’s always great to be back home. 

Many thanks to our International Students for cooking up a wonderful holiday lunch on Wednesday.  There were foods from Saudi Arabia, China and yes, even the US!  

To kick off the holiday season, our faculty and staff will be decorating their office doors so they could compete in the annual door decorating contest across our Elkins Park and East Oak Lane campuses.  Judging will be done next week, so keep an eye out on our Salus social media platforms to see which doors won! 

I’d like to remind our faculty and staff to attend our annual Holiday Party on Friday, 20 December at 1:00pm in the Hafter Student Center. As usual, the event will include food, games, prizes, dancing, and Length of Service Award presentations.

I want to wish our students the best of luck as you finish up your finals!  I hope you all were able to take a break on Wednesday and enjoy some Pet Therapy time in the Learning Resource Center (LRC).  If you weren’t able to make it, keep an eye out around the next finals season as our staff at the LRC make sure to coordinate these sessions as an opportunity for you all to de-stress!

And how about those bagels? – Hopefully they gave you a much needed boost to get you through the day!

Next week, we will be hosting our bi-annual University Development Day and Faculty Social.  As some of you might know, our “UD Day” sessions serve as an opportunity for our faculty members across the University to become students for a day of workshops ranging in topics from team building to personal and professional growth. I look forward to learning from everyone’s sessions.   

The annual Army-Navy game will be played on Saturday at the Linc. So, if you’re going into the city, be aware there likely will be lots of traffic.

So as you get ready to head out for your well-deserved breaks, please stay safe and try to do something fun.  Wishing you all a very safe and happy holiday.

GO NAVY - BEAT ARMY!!!!

Mike   

Holiday Edition: Week of December 14, 2018

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

It’s been another busy week at Salus with most of our students completing their last set of final exams. As finals begin to wind down, there were several "finals food experiences" Monday through Wednesday outside the café and Learning Resource Center ranging from bagels to yummy sandwiches to hot beverages. Additionally, mentors from the Peer Mentoring Program gave out stress reliever goodie bags Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully, all these extras helped to ease the stress and facilitate great outcomes on the exams.

The Hafter Student Community Center gym held its first Active Educational Workshops on Wednesday, December 12, where members have the opportunity to learn about different health, fitness, nutrition and/or wellness topics in a small setting with a trainer on staff. The first was Ride & Learn – a leisurely cycle class limited to 10 participants as they learned stress management techniques. 
 
If you haven’t had the chance to check out our new virtual tour of the campus, check it out here.  We recently partnered with YouVisit, LLC – an immersive technology company that connects schools with prospective students across popular platforms via virtual reality tours to design a complete walking tour of the University’s campus, giving prospective students unlimited access to the grounds of the University that can be viewed from at home on a computer or on a mobile device. Congrats to Alexis Abate and Lesley  Westerfer and their team for getting this all together. 

Thanks to Dr. Lindsay Bondurant and Bob Serianni for presenting a very informative Grand Rounds presentation at The Eye Institute this morning. It was great to see the interaction between optometry, audiology and speech-language pathology.  We need to have more of these interprofessional discussions within each of our programs and in the continuing education setting. Well done!
Today, in addition to everything else going on, we will be hosting State Representative Mary Jo Daley both at the Elkins Park and East Oak Lane campuses. The visit provides yet another opportunity for us to educate our state legislators about what we do at Salus. This is extremely important as the legislature takes on scope of practice bills for optometry and other professions.

Today is the annual holiday party where we get a chance to thank and recognize all of our very talented and dedicated Salus faculty and staff for the work they’ve done in support of our mission over the last year. Many of our folks will be receiving Service Awards ranging from five to thirty-five years.  Reflecting on that, most, but not all, of our students weren’t even born when some of our folks started here!  That puts things into perspective. The people who have been here the longest represent the shoulders all of us have been standing on as we move the University forward. I thank everyone for their hard work and dedication to the important work we do here.

Finally, I’ll be off the grid for a couple of weeks so I wanted to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very safe and joyous holiday season. 

Looking back, it’s been a pretty productive year at Salus. We’ve updated curricula in several programs, renovated classrooms, added exam rooms at The Eye Institute, dedicated the Lombardi Classroom, celebrated the 10th Anniversary of becoming a University, said farewell to several of our faculty and staff and welcomed new ones, just to name a few things from 2018. Next year we celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of our founding college, Pennsylvania College of Optometry. And what a party that will be! 

So, whether you celebrated Hanukkah last week or will be celebrating Christmas or Kwanzaa, I hope you’ve taken the time to reflect on all the great things that have gone on in our small world at Salus. Our University has served as an enabler, not just for our students, but also for everyone we care for on a daily basis.  Every child we see in the Philadelphia, Norristown, Abington or Jenkintown schools benefit from life-changing services that only we are providing. Having the opportunity to serve those who are less fortunate is a gift that we should cherish and be thankful for.  I am grateful for the commitment of our faculty and staff and the talented students who have chosen to attend Salus.  I want to take this opportunity to thank all of them for their hard work and dedication to the University. Special thanks to our alumni for your continued philanthropic support, which helps make many of the things we do possible and finally to our volunteer Board of Trustees for their time, support and invaluable guidance. 
 
Enjoy your well-deserved time off.  Spend time with family, friends and significant others. Recharge your mental batteries and get ready to hit the deck running when you return in January.  Be safe and look out for one another. 

Mike

Happy Holidays to All!

'Twas the day before Christmas when all throughout Salus not a student was stirring, not even in labs;

The faculty hung around, but by the end of the day, hoped to get home to catch some last minute shopping or football plays;

The staff settled in and then headed home to bed while visions of construction danced in their heads;

The library, the lab, and others quite near, are all on the docket to be improved next year,

All of our specialties are prepped for next year – waiting for the students to all re-appear,

As we close out this chapter in our history, we wish all a great holiday with peace and prosperity.


Happy Holidays to All!