Operations Update October 2013

Chief Operating Officer
Dwayne Martins

• Thank you to everyone who sent in budget documentation. The information received will now be vetted, will be prepared for the Dean's meeting with the Executive Team at Western.

• Recognizing the great things people in our organization do helps boost morale across the School. I encourage all of you to participate in our "Thank you card" initiative and send out a thank you card to someone you feel deserves recognition. Cards can be requested through Jasmin Neil in communications.

• A Town Hall meeting is set for January 24 from noon until 1:00 p.m. in DSB 1002. During the Town Hall, I will touch on a few details from our Fall Budget submission.

Project Management Office/Strategic Technology Commons
Dale Shelley

• The Project Management Office (PMO) has successfully completed an intensive change management methodology course and will be incorporating the learnings into our toolkit for knowledge transfer.

• On December 4 and 5 the PMO is offering our first two-day 'Focus' workshop (Process Improvement, and Management Methodology & Tools).Watch for more information, including how to register for this workshop in the coming weeks.

• STC continues to have several small and larger projects on the go to enhance the teaching tools and delivery methods to our learners. STC is always available for consultation through stc@schulich.uwo.ca

Alumni Relations and Development
Mark Foresi

• As you know, the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry is a part of Western University's major fund raising campaign. Our School's goal is $145 million. We are encouraged by the past success achieved to date in support of this critical fund raising campaign. And we look forward to continuing to achieve our goals.
  
  Given the magnitude of the fund raising goal, a review of the structure of the approach to fund raising for the School was undertaken. Following that review with Dr. Strong, it was agreed that there were synergies to be gained between a higher level of alignment between the Alumni & Development team at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and the University's central fund raising team.

  
  We believe that by working more closely together, more opportunities will be realized, expertise shared, and resources optimized. To that end we have made a few changes to the alignment of the School's team. As part of this realignment, Gillian Sneddon is now working from the offices at Westminster Hall alongside Western's senior leadership fund raising teams. She has a specific fund raising focus on some very urgent priorities, transformative gifts from donors, and the development of prospects. Her administrative responsibilities have shifted to Mark Foresi.

  Mark and the rest of the team will continue to work from the Robarts offices for the next few months and it is expected that Mark and the team will be moving to the Clinical Skills Building once the second floor is ready. They will continue to focus on the numerous projects associated with the campaign.

  The whole Alumni and Development team at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry are receiving guidance and support from Jan New, who oversees the fund raising for the faculties and divisions across the University.

  Our collective goal is to ensure an ideal structure is in place to best support the team's progress to success. We will review this structure and our successes associated with it, following six months.

  We look forward to a very successful year for our School's fund raising.

Basic Medical Sciences
Doug Jones

Basic Medical Sciences Undergraduate Education (BMSUE)

• Thousands of highschool students and their families visited Western on Fall Preview Day, November 16. Faculty, staff and current students welcomed the visitors at the basic medical sciences displays and the BMSc Program booth in the Medical Sciences Building.

• Additional activities planned for November include developing online tools to clarify the Common Course Policy, ongoing maintenance of the BMSc and Neuroscience websites, editing of the Academic Calendars and 2014/15 Academic Timetable, and updating course and modular enrolment data.

• Faculty and staff were involved in the BMSc Convocation ceremony held on October 31.

• Over the next few months, BMSUE E-Learning Coordinator, Dr. Sarah McLean, will take part in organizing Western's Technology in Education Symposium (TIES) to be held in March 2014.

Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

• Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry Graduate Studies convocation occurred Friday November 1, 2013. Congratulations to all of our students who graduated this fall.

• Congratulations to Kris James a recent MSc student training with Dr. Mymryk in our Microbiology & Immunology Graduate Program. His thesis entitled "The Interaction of the Human Adenovirus E1A Protein with the Human DREF Transcription Factor" has averaged 1.82 downloads per day. His was the second most downloaded for new Western Thesis submissions in September.

• Thank you to Anatomy and Cell Biology for kicking off the graduate lecture series. 40 very enthusiastic future graduate students attended. Dr. Alison Allan, Leah Labranche (MSc candidate) and Morgan Black (MSc candidate) all gave an excellent presentation. Presentations were also held by Medical Biophysics, Microbiology and Immunology, Pathology and Pathologist Assistants', and Physiology and Pharmacology. Epidemiology & Biostatistics closes the Fall Lecture Series Sessions on November 19.

Communications
Jennifer Parraga

• Please join me in welcoming Emily Leighton, Communications Coordinator and Narmata Naguleswaran, Web Redevelopment Clerk, the newest members of the Communications and Marketing Team. Emily will be supporting all the UME (incl. Windsor, DME), LEW, and Dentistry Programs, as well as the Global Health Office, Alumni & Development and managing Mini Medical School, Cafe Scientifique, and doing feature writing for all our publications. Narmata has joined us on a short-term contract to assist numerous departments across the School with their web redevelopment.

• London Health Research Day has a new website, featuring a dynamic homepage, photo gallery and more. Click here to view the new website.

• Is there someone in your department that you would like to acknowledge or congratulate? You can send a special note card complete with artwork, graphics design and photography from the School's own faculty, staff and student. You can get these free cards by contacting Jasmin Neil.
  
• Schulich Medicine & Dentistry Roots sweatshirts are now available to order - they would make the perfect gift for someone over the holidays, contact Jasmin Neil with sizes. Click here to view our merchandise page.

John Ruicci

• Congratulations to SWOMEN's Mary Peterson and PGME's Sue Smyth. Both were recently recognized for their long-standing contributions to Western with the prestigious Western Award of Excellence.

• We would like to welcome Courtney Newnham-Kanas to the School. Courtney is the new Postgraduate Program Coordinator and will be looking after PGME's accreditation and all remediation, probation and appeals processes.

• CPD has applied for a two-year grant from the Academic Medical Organization of Southwestern Ontario (AMOSO) Innovation Fund. The proposed project will provide an academic detailing intervention to primary care practitioners, a service which is just emerging in Ontario, on the topic of depression. The CPD office has received approval from the Finance Management Committees for Family Medicine and Psychiatry, and will be submitted their final proposal for local review by the Innovation Fund Sub-Committee on October 31, 2013. Final funding decisions will be made in March 2014.

• The MPH Program has been granted "applicant" status with the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH). The self-study is due September 2015 with an expected decision in Fall 2016.

• Postgraduate Medical Education verified its CaRMS quota for the 2014 R1 match. Western will be offering 187 R1 positions in 2014.

• The UME clinical elective program formally known as "MedQuest" has a new name, "MedLINCS", standing for Medical Learning in Community Settings. The name, developed by one of our community partners, is reflective of the goals of this elective.

Rosemary Hicks

• Thank you to everyone for completing their budget submissions in a timely manner. The Finance Team has started to review the budgets and will be contacting you with any questions. For those areas where we are piloting "no targets", we appreciate your patience as we work through this new concept.

• We have completed the financial part of the budget meetings, it was a busy couple of weeks! Thank you to everyone involved as it was a good learning process for myself with regards to how each Department operates, and I appreciated the time everyone took to prepare for the meetings.

• On Friday, November 1, we presented the revised DRAFT of the clinical funding model. We ask that each Department review their individual information and please contact me if you have any questions.

Human Resources

Theresa Mugimba

• Dr. James E. Calvin has been appointed Chair/Chief of the Department of Medicine effective November 1, 2013.

Information Services
Sergio Rodriguez

• Information Services is currently working on implementing a new Issue Management System (including Helpdesk support tickets, software bugs, project and task management, and change requests) to better serve our customers. Jira, the new system, will assist in the goals of better customer service through its set of comprehensive features, as well as assisting in providing more useful data about our environment to aid in decision making. Since this is the same platform that Western ITS is using, implementing this system will also further enhance integration and collaboration with Western ITS. More information about this system will be shared in targeted emails in the next few weeks.

• In late November, our server team will be upgrading our servers to the latest version of the GroupWise platform known as GroupWise 2012. The new version includes many enhancements to the GroupWise WebAccess environment as well as templates that support mobile devices such as iPads. After the server updates are carried out in November, in the following weeks, the support team will focus on upgrading the GroupWise client (ie. program) that our customers use at their computers. The GroupWise 2012 client includes many new features, both cosmetically and functionally. Further details will be shared in focused communications during the next few weeks.

• Information Services is currently working with Western Telecommunications and central procurement to investigate the viability of selecting and dealing with a single provider for cellular services for Schulich Medicine & Dentistry mobile devices.

Media Relations
Kathy Wallis

• The official opening of The Western Centre for Public Health and Family Medicine building was a big success with Minister Deb Matthews promising to return to talk with public health students, and to get a closer look at some of the research being conducted there. Along with the media coverage received for that day, the opening is one of two Schulich Medicine and Dentistry stories which will be featured on "Western Revealed" on Rogers Cable 13 on November 12 at 8:00 p.m. with several repeats throughout the month. The other is a feature on our Mini Medical School.

• Ravi Menon's research on Multiple Sclerosis drew strong local media coverage (CTV two, London Free Press) as well as in international websites including medicalnewstoday.com and americannewsreport.com. Another Robarts scientist, Marco Prado's latest Alzheimers research was on redorbit and CTV two and several other outlets.

• I expect good media turnout at Robarts Research Institute on November 18 in the afternoon when the Leaders in Innovation special guest Martin Sheen tours some labs, and speaks with scientists and reporters.

Mady Hymowitz

• We're pleased to welcome Ms. Mariel Angus to the Research Office as the new Administrative Assistant for student/trainee research programs. Mariel comes to us from the Global Health Office at the School. In her new role, Mariel will be handling administrative requirements for programs including SRTP, SROP, MD/PhD and NSERC USRA.

• As part of the Western Global Health Research Workshop series, there was a workshop on "Saving a Generation: Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in the Developing World." The workshop was held November 7 and focused on the challenges and successes of maternal, newborn, and child health in the developing world.

• Eight awards have been made through the Collaborative Research Seed Grant competition, a new pilot program to provide seed funding for the formation and development of new interdisciplinary collaborative research teams. To view a list of the projects awarded the grant, click here.