Blogging in the Clouds: Week of November 16, 2018

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

Greetings from the air as I head up to Boston to join our speech-language pathology and audiology colleagues at their annual American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) conference. Isn’t technology great?! I’m excited to see their posters and interact with many of our students, faculty and alumni! Dr. Aravamudhan represented OCA at the convention attending her CAA board meeting and making a presentation on her research project with mild Traumatic Brain Injury patients.

I hope everyone survived our first taste of winter weather yesterday. It was quite a surprise! Even with our pre-winter surprise, things remained busy at Salus.

On Tuesday evening our staff from The Eye Institute was honored with the Montgomery County School Nurse Association’s (MCSNA) School Health Partnership Award in recognition for the School Vision Programs. Tanis and I had the honor of attending, along with Dr. Brandy Scombordi, Dr. Luis Trujillo and Cathie Muhr.

Last week I mentioned that Dr. Bisant Labib became the 15th diplomate in the Comprehensive Eye Care section of the AAO. What I didn’t’ know at the time was that Dr. Labib made history by being the youngest female to ever attain this historical achievement - many congratulations to her!

Given the almost total devastation of the town of Paradise, California from the terrible fires out there, I felt compelled to mention that in this week’s update. Here are some staggering stats as of yesterday:

California officials said they've identified most of the 59 people known to have died in wildfires that started a week ago. Searchers recovered eight more victims of the "Camp Fire" north of Sacramento on Wednesday along with a third victim of the "Woolsey Fire" near Los Angeles. In the "Camp Fire," 130 other people are still unaccounted for. The blaze has destroyed nearly 9,000 homes and forced at least 52,000 people to evacuate.

If you are interested in assisting those affected by devastating California fires, the Red Cross has a separate pull down item "California Wildfires" for this purpose on their "Donate Now" page.

As we approach this weekend, please keep the folks in California in your thoughts and prayers. Have a safe and restful weekend!

Mike

Greetings from San Antonio: Week of November 9, 2018

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

Greetings from San Antonio where I’m attending the annual meeting of the American Academy of Optometry, along with many of our PCO faculty and students.  It’s been a great meeting with several of our faculty and students attaining professional recognition in the form of academy diplomate status and practice excellence recognition.  Congratulations to Dr. Bisant Labib, Co-Chief of Suite 3, who earned her Diplomate in Comprehensive Eye Care and to Susan Barnes and Kathrine Boas, both from the PCO class of 2019, for receiving a VSP Practice Excellence Award.  We’re extremely proud of all of you!  Also, several of our faculty and students are presenting lectures and posters throughout the meeting. PCO is making a huge splash in San Antonio!!!

Just a reminder that Dr. Trego and PCO will be hosting an Alumni and Friends reception in the Grand Hyatt, Texas Ballroom F, 4th Floor later today at 6:30 p.m.  We hope everyone who’s in San Antonio for the Academy meeting can join us!

Congratulations to Radhika Aravamudhan who has just been named the Dean of the Osborne College of Audiology!

Rachel Ditoro, MSPAS, PA-C, associate professor, College of Health Sciences, presented three talks to Physician Assistant Program educators at the annual Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) Forum in Anaheim, CA: “Competency-based Medical Education (CBME): Beginning with the End in Mind” parts one and two, which provided an overview of CBME, its core components, and its utilization in PA education.  Ditoro also co-presented a third talk, “Early Remediation Using a Competency-based Education Model” with Donna Agnew, MSPAS,PA-C,DFAAPA, interim dean, College of Health Sciences, addressing targeted remediation for identified deficits.  It’s great to see our folks lecturing on the national stage.

Congratulations to our Looking Out For Kids charity fundraiser team for orchestrating what has been our best event to date last Saturday night.  We had over 300 people in attendance including Senator Vincent Hughes and our Lighthouse Award recipient, Donna Frisby-Greenwood.

Special thanks to Kate Braemer and the team in Institutional Advancement and Alumni Relations for putting all this together. Special thanks to Rosemary Connors from NBC10 who served as our co-host and to all of our sponsors, including National Vision, Lindy Property Management Co., Conicelli Toyota, Fox Rothschild, E.B. Reilly, MyEyeDr, Office Depot, T3 Construction, U.S. Vision and many others.  Also, special thanks to our Board of Trustee members for your attendance as well to all those who contributed time, wine, money and artwork to the silent auction.  It looked like everyone had a great time! For more info, check out our website.

The Keneseth Israel Reform Congregation is holding a concert featuring the Main Line Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Don Liuzzi, 68-member musicians, a guest narrator, and soloists on Sunday at 7:15 p.m. Salus students, faculty and staff have been invited to attend this great event.  Admission is $10 and tickets will be available at the door.

It looks like it’s going to be a nice cool weekend in Philadelphia! Get out the hot chocolate and settle in with your books if you’re studying, or try to get outside and enjoy what’s left of the fall leaves.  There will be snow on the ground before we know it!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Mike

Looking Out for Kids Fundraiser: Week of November 2, 2018

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

It’s been another productive week at Salus with preparations for our LookingOut For Kids charity fundraiser being completed for tomorrow night’s event. So far over 300 people have registered to join us at the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue to help raise money for this very worthy charity. We’ll also be honoring our Lighthouse Award recipient, Donna Frisby-Greenwood, at the event.

On Wednesday, I was interviewed by Rosemary Connors, who will co-host the event, at the brand-new NBC 10 studio in the Comcast Innovation Center in Center City.

Also on Wednesday, the office of Student Affairs held The Ultimate Treat Event in the afternoon outside of the Café with treat bags, baked goods, and raffle prizes – and plenty of students donning Halloween costumes. It was great to see everyone enjoying all those treats. I suspect there are many hours of gym time scheduled to offset the goodies we all enjoyed. 

Dennis Washington, our vice president for Institutional Advancement, and I spent Monday and Tuesday in Florida visiting several of our alumni. We had the opportunity to spend some time with our oldest alumni, Dr. Morey Powell who is 103 years old. It was great to catch up and hear Dr. Powell’s insights on what the country was like almost a century ago as compared to now. Our conversation made the “good ole days” sound pretty good!  We had named one of our new classrooms after Dr. Powell and used this opportunity to present him with a picture of the plaque that is now outside the Powell classroom. He was extremely excited. We also visited Dr. Michael Hecht and Dr. Ronnie Snyder. Dr. Hecht is a classmate of mine and Dr. Snyder is a graduate of the class of 1967.

Last week the StudentOccupational Therapy Association (SOTA) celebrated World OT Day by tabling outside of the café. World OT Day (which was on October 27) aims to spread awareness about what occupational therapy is and the importance of OT worldwide. The SOTA officers provided their peers and faculty members with an interactive “two truths and a lie” game to test knowledge and see what the Salus community already knew about OT. SOTA gave out lollipops with fun facts about OT, baked goods, and OT balloons. Overall, SOTA successfully engaged and educated the Salus community about the scope and importance of occupational therapy.

 

At last week’s Academy of Doctors of Audiology annual conference, the meeting opened with an all-day symposium on comorbidities in the audiology patient. This has been a major project for Dr. Victor Bray as the symposium's organizer. Dr. Bray delivered the opening and closing talk as well as covering one of the content areas in a panel discussion. We believe this was the first time there has been an all-day symposium focused on the topic of comorbidities in an audiology patient. Congratulations Dr. Bray for helping to get the Salus name out there!

Later today, during Salus Time, we’ll roll out our Interprofessional Clinical Care initiative in room S305A. Dr. Karen Hansen has been leading the charge on this initiative for the past few months, working with clinic directors in each college, in an effort to tie together our clinics in a meaningful way that enhances inter-clinic communication as well as patient referrals. The staff will be unveiling our new Salus Interprofessional Questionnaire and explaining its significance to the process. This is open to everyone and I would encourage you to attend if you’re going to be on campus. 

Finally, Daylight Savings Time ends early Sunday morning, so don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour Saturday night. That gives us an extra hour of sleep as well as an extra hour to raise money for Looking Out For Kids Saturday evening. Have a great weekend!

Mike

State Representative Visits Salus: Week of October 26, 2018

Good morning from a cold morning in Elkins Park!

It’s been another great week at Salus. Here are some of our highlights:

On Monday, we hosted State Representative Marcy Toepel at our Elkins Park campus. We had the opportunity to discuss all of our programs, but concentrated on why the legislature needs to update the current optometric scope of practice laws to reflect what’s being taught at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry and other optometry programs around the country. After a great discussion and tour of our facility, where Melissa Trego, OD, PhD, dean, Pennsylvania College of Optometry, had the opportunity to show Representative Toepel our virtual reality training lab first hand. I think Rep. Toepel came away with a renewed appreciation of what optometrists can and should be doing to care for their patients. These visits are important to ensure our legislators understand the high quality and comprehensive education our students receive, not just in optometry but in every profession we train. It’s also a great opportunity for elected officials to learn what services Salus provides to our local communities - often at no cost to the people we serve.

NBC-10 news spotlighted our School Vision Program, our doctors and students while they conducted screenings at McCloskey Elementary School in Philadelphia just the other day. TEI resident Dr. Ryan Kern and a team of third year optometry students did an excellent job showcasing the great work that we do through our school screening program.

Congratulations to Mitchell Scheiman, OD, PhD, director, Graduate Programs, Biomedicine and his team at New Jersey Institute of Technology for winning two of three Auggie Awards – the most recognized industry virtual reality awards in the world.  The awards were given for two projects - Excellence in collaborative projects between industry and academia and the most impactful breakthrough and honoring a Women XR Laureate. Congratulations Mitch!

The American Optometric Student Association (AOSA) will hold its annual Optometry Cares 5K run/walk on Sunday, October 28 from 9 a.m. to noon at Alverthorpe Park in Abington, Pa. All proceeds will benefit the American Optometric Association’s Optometry Cares foundation. Please try to get out there to support this great cause.

Our annual Looking Out For Kids (LOFK) charity fundraiser is only a week away! If you haven’t already purchased your tickets, it’s not too late. This year’s event is being held at the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue which is a beautiful venue in a great location. If you can’t come, please consider donating on our website.

Finally, there’s been a good bit of distracting and distressing news this week about politics, mail bombs, general discord and the geopolitical fallout from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. With all this swirling around us, it’s helpful for all of us remain mentally and morally focused on our mission at Salus – advancing integrated health care through innovative education, research and clinical services. Our students have enough to do between studying and going to class and labs and our faculty and staff are constantly working to ensure our students receive the best education possible in addition to ensuring the patient care provided in our clinics is nothing less than excellent. While it’s extremely important to be aware of the current events, it’s imperative for you to focus on our patients, clients and the education that will enable you to help others well into the future. 

The one thing that you all can do is to vote – no matter what your political affiliation is, that’s the one way we have, as Americans, to clearly express our opinion and desires as to how our government works. Tuesday, November 6 is election day. Mark it on your calendars and ensure that you either have an absentee ballet if you’re not going to be around or get to a polling place. Every vote counts, so please ensure you plan your time to exercise your constitutional right to choose who represents us.

On that note, I’ll close wishing everyone a safe and restful weekend. It looks like we’re going to have a nor’easter starting tonight, so please be careful if you’re going out and about. 

Mike

Midterms: Week of October 19, 2018

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

Greetings from Salus where it’s a beautiful fall day!

This has been a week of midterms for many students. You could tell that testing was going on as the hallways were pretty quiet most of the week. I trust all of our students have survived their midterm week in stellar form and now are ready to start the second half of their terms.

I want to take a minute to offer congratulations to Donna Agnew, MSPAS, PA-C, DFAAPA on her recent appointment as the interim dean of the University's College of Health Sciences. 

On Wednesday evening, Salus Institutional Advancement hosted a social event at Yards Brewing Co. in Philadelphia to celebrate Salus University’s 10 year anniversary. Young alumni, students, faculty and staff came out to have a good time. The food and ambiance were great – as was the ping pong! Glad to see many of our students, faculty, alumni and staff attending and we’ll do this again next year.

Speaking of alumni, our Salus Alumni Association Board had their quarterly meeting last Sunday morning on campus. I had the opportunity to bring the board up to speed on many great things that are going on around campus as well as to share some strategic thoughts on the direction we’re moving the University. We spent a good bit of time discussing our upcoming Centennial Celebration for PCO and some of the events surrounding that. It’s great to see alumni involvement in this and many other things we’re doing here at Salus.

This coming Saturday, the Pennsylvania Ear Institute (PEI) will host an Open House from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be expert talks, tours, and complimentary hearing screenings. If you’re in the neighborhood I encourage you to stop by.

Don’t forget that November 3 is our annual Looking Out forKids Charity Fundraiser at the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue. Purchase your tickets for the 12^th annual benefit here.

Speaking of Looking Out for Kids, the program has been acknowledged by the Montgomery County School Nurses Association for the important work it has been doing in the Montgomery County schools. Congratulations to the team of Susan Oleszewski, OD ’76, MA who began all of this, as well as to Brandy Scombordi, OD and Cathie Muhr for ensuring the program maintains its momentum.

Finally, it looks like another nice weekend so please take some time to get outside, exercise and enjoy the changing colors and nice crisp temperatures. Be safe and look out for each other.

Mike

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

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

I hope everyone has had a fruitful week.  I’ve been away for most of it, participating in the Greater Philadelphia Leadership Exchange in Seattle, WA.  Abbreviated as GPLEX, the leadership exchange is an initiative of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia to develop leaders of business, civic, and government organizations into more informed leaders, dedicated to making Philadelphia and surrounding areas into a world class region. Through out-of-region learning visits, like this week’s to Seattle, the Leadership Exchange exposes folks to new insights and ideas, as well as establish connections across sectors and industries. During this year’s exchange in Seattle we were able to see how they address key issues such as homelessness, education, healthcare, crime and the growing influence of Amazon, whose headquarters is located right downtown.  It was very insightful to see how Seattle has developed a Global Health Alliance to help deconflict competing resources and conversely, how the number of homeless people have grown significantly due to the rise in housing costs in the city, primary driven by the tech industry there. I also had the opportunity to network with many of our greater Philadelphia community leaders who hopefully will help to market our Salus brand regionally and provide new opportunities for us to leverage our programs and clinics. All in all, it was a great experience but it’s also great to be back home!

Closer to home, I’d like to congratulate Patricia Mayro, Assistant Professor in the University's Speech-Language Pathology Program, who has been selected from hundreds of applicants across the nation to serve as one of only 15 Apraxia Kids Volunteer Outreach Coordinators. Those selected are highly qualified and dedicated individuals willing to advocate in their communities so that children with apraxia of speech have optimal opportunities to achieve functional speech. Well done Trish!

In our College of Education and Rehabilitation, The Nebraska Center for the Education of Children who are Blind or Visually Impaired’s newsletter dedicated one page to highlight Salus Orientation and Mobility cohort. 

Congratulations to Donna Agnew, MSPAS, PA-C, DFAAPA, Director of our Physician Assistant program, who has recently assumed the role of Interim Dean of College of Health Sciences.

Our Osborne College of Audiology was well represented at the Pennsylvania Academy of Audiology this week, with three Grand Rounds presentations and one poster by students Jenna Fenton ‘20AUD, Elisa Hoyos ‘20AUD, Deidre Creegan ‘20AUD, Olivia Bologna ‘20AUD, Maura Kelly ‘20AUD, Maria Ragonese ‘20AUD, and Christi-Marie Williamson ‘20AUD.  Victor Bray, PhD, associate professor, also gave a presentation on Depression and Hearing Loss at the meeting.

Congratulations to Martin Pienkowski, PhD on publishing his article on Tinnitus in the journal, Neuroscience.  

We also congratulate Radhika Aravmudhan, PhD, interim dean, Osborne College of Audiology, who has been elected as the vice-chair for Audiology on the Council on Academic Accreditation (CAA) Board and will serve on the executive committee of the CAA Board. 

 

A couple of reminders:

• Fall commencement is next Thursday at 2:00 p.m. at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Center City.  In addition to celebrating the achievements of our students, we’ll be presenting Dr. Janice Scharre with her honorary degree and she will also be our commencement speaker. It should be a wonderful event. 
• The 12^th Annual Looking Out For Kids Charity Fundraiser is on November 3rd at the Philadelphia Hilton, City Line Avenue. The committee has done a great job in planning this event which should be lots of fun – and most importantly, raise lots of money for this very worthwhile charity.  
• As we continue to celebrate the Salus 10 year anniversary, join us at Yards Brewing and let's toast to many more years to come.  Invite your colleagues and friends , it only costs $20 (includes food and drinks). It should be a fun party!

As you can see, it’s been a busy week with some busy times to come.  A good reason to get some rest this weekend and get out and enjoy some of this nice Fall weather. Be safe and have fun.

Mike