October 2014
Chief Operating Officer
- Thank you to all faculty and staff who have participated in the four-year budget cycle process. These activities will continue throughout the month of November. On December 4, the Dean will present the budget.
- Thank you for supporting the United Way Campaign this year, a special thank you to those who wanted to see me without a mustache!
Media Relations
- This month we had great city-wide media coverage and created buzz around Dr. Rob Petrella's recent grant from the Movember Foundation. The grant will be used to fund his Hockey Fit pilot project which uses hockey culture in southwestern Ontario to improve men’s health.
- Our experts were quoted this month in a variety of articles about everything from Diabetes to Enteroviruses and Ebola in the Globe & Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun newspapers
- Join us on December 1, for the World AIDS Day panel discussion featuring Drs. Erica Arts, Stephen Barr, Jimmy Dikeakos, Gregor Reid and Michael Silverman. Click here for more information.
- Crystal Mackay is available to provide media relations training to your department. This training is appropriate for both faculty and students who may have requests from the media to speak about their research or ongoing initiatives. Contact Crystal Mackay at ext 80387 to find out more
Dentistry
- More than 300 faculty, staff and students attended Schulich Dentistry’s Annual Research Day on October 8.
- There were 26 student poster presentations. Martha J. Somerman, DDS, PhD delivered the 13th John T. Hamilton Distinguished Lecture. Dr. Somerman is the Director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Congratulations to the following award recipients:
- Greg Luvison, DDS 2017
- Vida Lam, DDS 2017
- Kimberly Williams, DDS 2017
- Erik Holm, DCS/DDS 2018
- Carine Bourassa, Graduate Orthodontics 2015
- Shawna Kim, DCS Student
- The Grad Ortho Expansion renovation is now complete. When you enter the newly renovated space, you will see a beautiful waiting room that is fully accessible and an enlarged reception office. In the Grad Ortho clinic area, the three brand new operatory areas are welcome additions for patient flow improvement and continued academic excellence.
Research
- Information for the 2015 NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) applications is now available. USRA enables undergraduate students (typically BSc or BMSc students) to gain research experience under the supervision of a faculty member who holds an active NSERC award. As a reminder, eligible Schulich Medicine & Dentistry supervisors are limited to submitting only one USRA application with one student.
- The New Faculty Lecture Series continues, with upcoming talks scheduled for December 12 featuring Dr. Kelly Anderson, and January 9.
- We continue with the third round of the pilot internal peer review program. This pilot is aimed at applicants for the March 2015 CIHR Transitional Operating Grant competition. More than 20 potential applicants are participating in the pilot, with more than 70 Schulich Medicine & Dentistry faculty providing input and assistance.
Human Resources
- HR will be working with the Managers, Administration & Finance to review administrative processes looking for opportunities to create efficiencies and generate standard operating procedures. The Basic Science departments have held their first meting and are beginning to review a few of their processes. The Clinical departments held their first meeting on November 13.
- The We Speak/We Act Committee has outlined a number of activities that are either currently being initiated or will be initiated by various departments in response to the comments made by faculty and staff in focus groups. Janet Frood and Anne Becker have consolidated the faculty and staff findings and will be presenting the Committee with a prioritized list based on feedback during the group sessions. Representatives from the Committee will be providing updates in the next few weeks and months to provide progress update
Finance
- Purchasing will be shutting down access to PeopleSoft Purchase Orders on November 30, 2014, after that date all Schulich Faculty and Staff will have to use Mustang Market. Please ensure you have received the appropriate training and contact Kristen McGill if you have any questions related to Mustang Market.
- We are in Phase 2 of budget meetings and will be advising you of any changes to your budget once these meetings are complete and we have presented the budget to the Provost in early December. Any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Janice Dethomasis, Vicki Douvalis or me. Just a reminder that Janice and Vicki's portfolios are as follows:
- Janice - Basic Science Departments, Graduate Studies and Education
- Vicki - Clinical Departments, Dentistry and Dean's Office
Basic Medical Sciences
Basic Medical Sciences Undergraduate Education (BMSUE)
Dr. Candace Gibson
- Western's Fall Preview Day was held on, November 16. Schulich Medicine & Dentistry’s Basic Medical Science and the Faculty of Science departments jointly hosted displays in the atrium of the Physics and Astronomy Building between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. In addition, presentations about Medical Sciences First Entry, the undergraduate programs, and Medicine & Dentistry were held throughout the day.
- Additional activities planned for November include developing online tools to clarify the Common Course Policy, finalizing the last stages of website development of the BMSc websites, and editing of the 2015/16 Academic Calendars and Timetable.
- During the next six weeks, Dr. Candace Gibson will meet individually with the Undergraduate Chairs to lead them through the final steps in the development of undergraduate program outcomes and detailed curriculum maps.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Dr. Andrew Watson
- External recruitment for graduate students has been successful (Wilfrid Laurier, Brock, Waterloo, U of T, Guelph, Alberta, Windsor, UBC, McGill and Western). We have met with more than 2,000 students, and gathered information from more than 300 potential students.
- Internal recruitment with our program specific lecture series continues to be a huge hit with future students. More than 200 students have registered for our fall lecture series. We still have four lecture series to go; Neuroscience, Microbiology & Immunology, Anatomy & Cell Biology and Biochemistry. Check out our events page for more details. In the month of October, we had over 3,400 page views to our future student website. We can see there is an increased interest in graduate studies.
- The October Current Affairs newsletter for current students was opened more than 1,000 times. The most popular newsletter feature was Dr. Andrew Watson’s reflection on scholarship opportunities. If you have missed this, or if you would like to see other articles regarding featured graduate students, please visit our newsletter page.
Communications and Events
- The website redevelopment phase two groups have reached their next check point and should now be done adding their content to their website. The Communications Team has begun reviewing each site and will provide revisions and recommendations to each group by the end of November.
- A great deal of planning and preparation has been underway for the Leaders in Innovation Dinner. The team is looking forward to the full day of events and to Victor Garber’s visit to the School.
- Holiday Cards and the School’s pictorial calendar have gone to print, and we expect them to arrive back in the next week or so.
- Another investment has been made into new swag – we have great stocking stuffer ideas including mittens, socks and tea mugs – all priced under $20.
- This year, we tried a few new approaches to the program, and included a “case-based” learning session with Drs. Shannon Sibbald and Mark Speechley from the Master of Public Health Program - where attendees had a chance to work together in small groups. We are most grateful to all the faculty who gave of their time for this community outreach event. Thank you to: Drs. Alison Allan, Subrata Chakrabarti, Marjorie Johnson, Les Kalman, Stephen Lomber, Shelley McKellar, Maggie Rebel, Jane Rylett, Harinder Sandhu, Shannon Sibbald, Michael Shkrum, Jim Silcox, Mark Speechley, and Andrew Watson.
Information Services
- New Campus Survey System - Western has recently entered into an agreement for the usage of a new online survey system called Qualtrics. As many of you know, Schulich Medicine & Dentistry has, for many years, been hosting its own online survey system. Schulich IS is currently in the process of planning the move from this system to Qualtrics. Look for more targeted communication regarding this change in the coming weeks.
- Video on Demand pilot - Over the last 2 months, Schulich IS has been working to implement a new Video on Demand service to be known as Schulich VOD. The system will allow for the posting of videos that can then be viewed on multiple devices (including mobile) in a secure and robust system for the Schulich Medicine & Dentistry community. To start, this will be a limited deployment for the posting of recorded lectures of years 1 and 2 of the undergraduate medical education committee. In the new year, we will be working with other Schulich Medicine & Dentistry stakeholders to develop new use cases for deploying the system more fully.
- In the month of October, our development team was extremely busy working on the implementation of the new AFMC Student Portal to process visiting student electives. The new portal went online November 12. A special thanks to the individuals in IS and the UME office for coordinating this very significant effort.
Project Management Office/Strategic Technology Commons
- Jay Loftus, Instructional Designer, STC, gave a presentation at the Online Learning Symposium's 20th Annual Conference on online learning in Orlando, Florida. Title of the talk: "Gold Stars and Intrinsic Motivation: Using PeerWise to engage and motivate learners in Higher Education". This was a project that he, Anita Woods and Tom Stavraky worked for more than a year. Jay also attended the Learning Outcomes Symposium and participated in several relevant sessions and has provided a summary of his learnings.
- Jay Loftus and Weikai Huang, STC have been working on several other projects, eg myPortfolio setup for Meds 2018; migrating the STC website to Cascade; developing modules in SCORM to enhance the online learning components of UME.
- Sue Morgan has extended her contract as Instructional Trainer with STC, replacing Deb Tieszer who extended her secondment until May 1, 2015. Sue Morgan can be reached at x81415, or stc@schulich.uwo.ca and is located in CSB2720. The standard operating procedure workshops are continuingcontinue to be offered through CPD, or contact Sue directly. Remember you can e-mail stc@schulich.uwo.ca for any consultation requests related to instructional design or training.
- The PMO is certified to develop & deliver Change Management workshops throughout Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, especially as new large projects come on line. More information to follow in the coming months. The next Two-Day 'Focus' workshop (Process Improvement & Management Methodology & Tools) will be December 17 and 18. Please email pmo.inquiry@schulich.uwo.ca to have your name added to the 'stand by' list for the first session in 2015 (date TBA)
Education
- CPD submitted its Institutional Self Study to the Committee on the Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME) on October 6 and hosted the site survey on November 17 and 18. The survey team of Dr. Connie Leblanc, Associate Dean, Dalhousie, and Dr. Ford Bursey, Associate Dean CPD - Memorial were "impressed" with the materials they reviewed and the faculty and staff with whom they met. CPD awaits a formal survey report in the next several months.
- DEN hosted a networking session for Schulich Medicine Faculty, Staff and Residents at the International Conference on Residency Education (ICRE) conference in Toronto. The reception celebrated the role of Distributed Medical Education in resident education and resident research projects across the DEN area.
- The Office of Global Health, in collaboration with the Associate Dean UME, Assistant Dean LEW, Drs. Robbie Stein and Michael Silverman developed an Ebola Preparedness Plan for students who will be traveling for Electives this Fall and Summer. A web-page will be created on the Office of Global Health website where this and other information will be posted and updated regularly.
Alumni Relations and Development
- Please welcome Ann Seabrook who joined the Development office on October 24 in the role of Development Assistant.
Facilities
- Architectural firm hired to design and oversee construction/commissioning of the new containment level 2+/3 laboratory.
- Flex space for HIV researchers to carry on work while construction occurs is nearly complete.
- Space/capital requests ranked and submitted in our budget documents.
