September 2014
Chief Operating Officer
- I encourage everyone to attend the upcoming Town Hall on November 18 when Rosemary Hicks and I will provide an overview on our faculty finances and budget process.
- Thank you cards are available for purchase. Please use these to acknowledge the great work of your team.
- Make sure that you understand the signing authority policies for the University as any agreement that legal binds Schulich/Western via contracts and agreements must be properly authorized.
Media Relations
- This month Steven Laviolette's research on the highs and lows of marijuana use garnered great local and national media attention including the Toronto Sun, CBC Radio Canada International and Le Journal de Montreal.
- Schulich Medicine & Dentistry researchers were featured twice in September in the Globe & Mail: Daniel Hardy's research was part of a feature article on epigentics, and Dr. Strong's work as part of the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Initiative was highlighted in an article on big data collection.
- Please continue to send me your story ideas and let me know about any upcoming publications that may be of interest to a wider audience.
Dentistry
- Schulich Dentistry is mourning the loss of former Dean, Dr. Ralph Brooke, who passed away on September 30, 2014. Dr. Brooke served as Dean of the School of Dentistry from 1982 to 1997. Under the leadership of Dr. Brooke, the dental school grew and thrived, helping make it one of the top dentistry programs in the country and a destination of choice for students looking for exceptional clinical experience. The Canadian Dental Association awarded Dr. Brooke with an Honorary Membership in 1994, which is given to recognize those who have made outstanding contributions to dentistry or the dental profession over a sustained period of time. Due to his major contributions in Schulich Dentistry, Dr. Brooke is also recognized as a Schulich Medicine & Dentistry Luminary.
- For the Class of 2017, Internationally Trained Dentists (ITD) Program, 251 applications were received. This month, 20 offers were made and replies are due early October.
Research
- We continue to work on strategies to deal with funding gaps resulting from changes at CIHR.
- The third round of the pilot internal peer review program is underway. This program is aimed at applicants for the March 2015 CIHR Open Operating Grant competition. This pilot is being undertaken as a city-wide effort in cooperation with Lawson, and approximately 25 faculty are currently planning to participate.
- We are preparing for the upcoming application cycles for student research programs for undergraduates (USRA, SRTP, SROP, SWORP).
Human Resources
- Please be advised going forward all faculty paperwork produced by the Departments (FAN's, JRAF's, AAPAN, leave forms, etc) is strongly encouraged to be sent electronically to the School’s HR's Department at our new email address dedicated solely for faculty related paperwork.
- All appointment letters (except for new full time clinical academics) generated from Human Resources at the Dean's Office will be sent electronically to each Department in order for direct follow up with their respective faculty members.
- This is a friendly reminder that no backdating of faculty appointments is permitted and, no faculty member should be working without an active faculty appointment. Going forward, task groups will be created in order to continue to streamline our faculty processes as well as implementing standard operating procedures (SOP's). Any questions regarding this new process can be directed towards Laura Fleming, HR - Faculty or Betty Holme, Director of Organizational Effectiveness.
Finance
- Thank you to everyone for their time and preparation for the budget meetings, it has been helpful to get a preliminary understanding of everyone's strategy for the four- year budget cycle. A reminder that the budget files and request forms are due October 24, and the strategic plan/budget narrative is due October 27.
- For those faculty/staff whose cell phones are being covered by Schulich budget dollars, if you have not done so already, please work with Schulich IS to have coverage under the Corporate Plan. Also, for those who have travel plans outside of Canada, please make sure you contact Schulich IS to make arrangements for travel packages (i.e. roaming).
Basic Medical Sciences
Basic Medical Sciences Undergraduate Education (BMSUE)
Dr. Candace Gibson
- Doug Jones, Candace Gibson, Joan Estabrooks and Kathy Boon represented the Basic Medical Sciences at the Ontario Universities' Fair held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is the primary recruiting event for the Ontario Universities and Colleges, with a final attendance number for the three days exceeding 129,700 visitors.
- Western's Fall Preview Day will be held on Sunday, November 16. Organizers anticipate more than 11,000 guests (high school students and their families) will attend this one-day event to view the campus and speak to program representatives. Schulich Medicine & Dentistry Basic Medical Science and the Faculty of Science departments will jointly host 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 will be held throughout the day.
- Information sessions are planned for students in Medical Sciences 1 this month to familiarize them with Western’s modular system, the progression requirements to Medical Sciences 2, and admission to the Neuroscience and BMSc Programs.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Dr. Andrew Watson
- Janelle Cobban and Doug Jones represented the School’s Graduate programs at the University of British Columbia Career Fair held at on the UBC campus in Vancouver and Janelle represented our programs at the University of Alberta Fair in Edmonton. Jim Johnson and Doug will be at the next Fair to be held at McGill in Montreal in early November. These are important recruitment sites for many of our new graduate students who come from outside of Ontario. There was quite a buzz about all of our programs and a real interest in knowing that we have both an undergraduate and graduate Neuroscience program at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry.
- Welcome to Susan Simpson who has just started in her position managing both the graduate and undergraduate Neuroscience programs. Susan comes to us from the Registrar’s office. Her office is in the Robarts Research Institute on the third floor. Susan will be assisting David Sherry, coordinator of the undergraduate Neuroscience program module and Co-directors, Susanne Schmid and Stefan Kohler with the graduate Neuroscience program. Thank you to Janelle Cobban for all her efforts as she has been doing double duty during the search to fill this position. She will continue to assist Susan as she will be in a steep learning curve. Thank you also to Joan Estabrooks who will also transitioning from assisting with the undergraduate program for the past 3+ years as it developed into the full four years of the undergraduate module.
- The next short while will be a busy time with scholarship and fellowship applications being submitted, evaluations being done as well as the start of the budgeting for the next 4 year cycle.
Communications
- September and October were busy months for the Communications & Marketing Team, we welcomed two staff members Jescia Hurst and Brian Blatnicki – Welcome Jesica and Brian. And we Kristin (Tate) Romak transitioned to her new role as Special Events Officer.
- We were pleased to complete the 2014 Issue of Rapport Magazine, now available online. We also completed work on the Graduate Studies Prospectus, an online interactive brochure for Graduate Studies, and an updated interactive brochure for the MPH program. We were able to also update the MPH video with current students and new images of our existing classes.
- This past month, we worked with the BMSc program to develop a new video for their program. We look forward to sharing that with everyone in the next coming week.
- Work also got underway on our plan to raise awareness about Accreditation, and the DEN Strategic Plan.
- We are looking forward to November 20, and the Taylor Symposium, Public Forum and Leaders in Innovation Dinner. Tickets are selling fast for the Dinner, so if you haven’t purchased yours yet, please click here.
- The website redevelopment phase two groups have reached their first check point. The Communications Team recently reviewed nearly all phase two websites to ensure compliance with best practices and the School's standards. This is a new process in the project that we hope will reduce the amount of work for our web managers nearing the launch.
- The tentative list of phase three websites and the projects time line are currently being drafted.
Information Services
- A new computer vulnerability now known as Shellshock was recently discovered - Shellshock presents a threat to certain server environments, as well as computers running Apple's Operating System known as Mac OS. When the vulnerability was discovered, IS identified potentially vulnerable servers and worked with vendors to secure those servers/systems against this threat. Users of Mac OS are encouraged to download and install security fixes provided by Apple to secure their own systems - if assistance is required on work related machines in this regard, our Helpdesk is happy to assist.
- The first month of 1st Year and 2nd Year Medical Video conference classes has successfully concluded without any technical disruptions. Clerks and Residents have both completed two Academic half days successfully. After a month of use, the new MSB384 and HSA101 audio and video equipment has worked well and we are still gathering feedback for future refinements. Over the month of September our EdTech team installed LED monitors and controls for faculty, staff and students to use for presentations in the small group rooms in the basement of the Medical Sciences Building.
- IS is in the process of working with Dentistry on two important initiatives. The first is a project to automate the majority of the Internationally Trained Dentist (ITD) admissions process which will provide a significant time savings for that program. Secondly, over the next several months, IS will be working with Dentistry on the acquisition and implementation of a new Patient Management System to facilitate improved operations of the clinics.
Project Management Office/Strategic Technology Commons
- Reminder that the SOP for the Staff Recruiting & Hiring process is located here.
- STC is currently establishing a framework for ePortfolios for students to build their portfolio during their undergrad medical education and as well, are developing standards for tracking student usage and performance on online learning modules for UME courses.
- Jay Loftus, Instructional Designer, will be presenting "Gold Stars and Intrinsic Motivation: Using Peer Wise to Engage and Motivate Learners in Higher Education" at the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference
Education
- The Chairs of PCCM have decided to implement three TOSCE (teaching OSCE) sessions for the Year 2 students in PCCM; these added teaching sessions will provide students with formative assessments and additional exposure to the OSCE format.
- UME's Global Health Office will have a set of 20 international partner sites in Brazil, China, Eastern Africa, Eastern Europe, Peru, India, Russia, South Africa and West Indies by the end of October. MOUs will be signed with each partner; Western Legal is assisting with this process.
- CPD submitted its Institutional Self Study to the Committee on the Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME) on October 6. The site survey agenda for November 17 and 18 is being finalized. Dr. Garcia will conduct the opening and closing meetings with the surveyors. The survey team is comprised of Dr. Connie Leblanc, associate dean, Dalhousie and Dr. Ford Bursey, Associate Dean CPD - Memorial.
- Dr Dave Dixon, Kathy Dantzer and Jason Eadie attended the 6th National Accredited Providers Conference in Toronto on September 27 to 28 in Toronto, during which Schulich CPD was presented with one of three Royal College CPD Provider Innovation Awards for CPD's academic detailing project.
- As of today, more than 50 per cent of the inaugural MPH graduating class (Class of 2014) have obtained employment or are enrolled in continuing education.
