The Save the Date list includes:
- Don't forget to change to your 2007-08 parking permit starting Monday!
- The Annual Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin (PSW) Meeting will be held September 6-8 in LaCrosse. The Pharmacy Alumni Association (PAA) luncheon during the meeting is scheduled for Saturday, September 8 at noon.
- New: Paul Hutson (PPD) will be hosting a School-wide pot luck at his home in Middleton on Sunday, September 9. Great idea, Paul!
- SOP Executive Committee meetings have been scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month, starting on September 11, at 12:00 in room 1128 (assuming the new procedure document gets adopted in time). 12 members and 9 advisory members must be present to constitute a quorum for regular business.
- The 2007 SOP Scholarships Ceremony will occur on Tuesday, September 11 in HSLC 1306, linking scholarship donors and recipients in a very powerful way. Pre-reception for donors at 5:15; ceremony at 6:00; post-reception around 8:30. Everyone is welcome.
- New: The SOP student picnic will be held on Thursday, September 13 at Vilas Park starting at 5:30. The students love when faculty and staff attend...all are welcome.
- New: The 3rd Annual Faculty Recognition Day will be held on Wednesday, September 26 from 3:00-5:00 in the Commons. Come and mingle and celebrate recent achievements of our extraordinary faculty.
- The Graduate Student Mixer will be held on Friday, September 28 starting at 5:30 in the Commons, celebrating a variety of graduate student awards and honors, and again linking fellowship and award donors and recipients.
- Plan now to join us for the 2007 Alumni Weekend on November 9 and 10. A terrific reception and awards ceremony for SOP Citations and the Alumni of the Year Award is held on Friday evening in the Commons, followed on Saturday by tailgating at Union South and the football game versus Michigan. Among the citation winners this year is our very own Judy Thompson (professor emerita, PharmSci/PPD). Similar to last year, SOP faculty and staff are welcome and encouraged to attend the Friday event at no cost, but you do have to RSVP. Contact Pam French (Alumni Affairs) for details.
- New: The first ever Wisconsin reception for alumni and friends at an American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) meeting will be held in Denver on Sunday, October 14 from 8:00-9:30pm at the Hyatt Regency.
- New: The Wisconsin alumni breakfast at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) meeting in San Diego will be held Monday, November 12 from 7:00-8:30am in Torrey 1,2,3 at the Hilton.
- New: Our alumni gathering at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) conference in Las Vegas is scheduled for Sunday, December 2 from 6:00-9:00pm at the Venetian.
Thanks to all who attended last Monday's SOP retreat. I know everyone is busy, but there is no better forum for us to grapple with the big issues we face, learn to work better together as a group, and reinvigorate our mission and strategic priorities. Many questions remain about the PharmD curriculum revision idea, but that section of the retreat generated good discussion, lively debate, healthy disagreement, and creative ideas that will be shaped and reshaped over the coming year. Some things we have to do, others we may want to do. More to come on that topic. Because we did not get as far along with the distance delivery discussion as I'd hoped, I'm planning to hold at least one open forum on the idea in fall semester to see if and when and how fast the faculty might like to pursue this direction. Orientation for our new MS and PhD students was held on August 24. There is a healthy crop of 11 PharmSci, 1 SAS, and 4 Pharmacy students starting up this fall. August 28 and 29 were set aside for orientation of our new PharmD and BS students, with a multicultural student session on August 30. Even the pre-pharmacy students were covered on August 31. These events are an incredible amount of work. Thanks to all the staff and faculty involved for this wonderful welcome for our new students.
There have been several successes in our faculty and staff recruitment activities in the past month that I'm happy to tell you about. On the staff side, I'd like to welcome Joan Palmer to the SOP family. Joan has joined the PharmSci Division as a grants manager/research administration expert. Her office is 6119 RH. Oana Martin (PhD with Sandro Mecozzi, PharmSci) is back with the School as lecturer for a year; she can be found in 4205 RH. On the faculty side, Warren Rose, new CHS faculty member in PPD, has just arrived and can be found in 4123 RH. And I'm very pleased to let you know that Paul Marker and Lara Collier have accepted faculty positions in PharmSci and will be joining the School in November. In addition, Michelle Chui has also accepted our offer and will be joining the SAS faculty next March. Welcome to all our new faculty and staff! And my continuing thanks to everyone chairing or serving on one of the many search committees or otherwise participating in these important recruitments. Two searches are underway in the Drug Delivery and Drug Discovery areas of PharmSci and an offer is pending for the second position in SAS. A search will be initiated soon for a post-award financial specialist to be added to the central Research Administration Office to support that important area of our research infrastructure.
A mention of all the new faculty and staff positions, as well as recent promotions, can be found in the August 22 Wisconsin Week. Thanks, Diane (Director of Communications)!
Other notable notes last month... Jon Thorson (PharmSci) recently spoke at the prestigious international Benzon Symposium in Copenhagen. A terrific summary of the conference and write-up of Jon's work appeared in Chemical & Engineering News. The innovation and importance of Jon's research directions were again highlighted in the August edition of Drug Discovery News with an extensive write-up and quotes. Steve Rough (PPD/UWHC) was re-elected Treasurer of the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin (PSW), and Tom Thielke (PPD/UWHC) received PSW's Distinguished Service Award for 2007. Joshua Schmidt (Li group, PharmSci) and Jian Zhang (Chemistry student in Shen group, PharmSci) defended their PhDs in August, and Hsingwen (Jerome) Chung (Kreling group, SAS) did likewise with his MS. Anna Legreid Dopp (ESP) and collaborators Orly Vardeny, Karen Kopacek, John Dopp (all PPD), Jason Sims (former PPD), Daisy Dai, and Amanda Sweet (PharmD students) have had an abstract accepted for presentation at the 2007 American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in Orlando in November (with a manuscript to follow). It is highly unusual for pharmacy faculty to be selected to present at this meeting. Lynn Maki and Melanie Schneider (Student Services) have been selected to make a presentation at the Wisconsin Academic Advising Association (WACADA) conference in September. Linda Halsey's (Director of Development) tennis team won the US Tennis Association's women's league state championship last month. Great work, all!
Our fond farewells to Lynn Van Campen, recently retired from the director position with the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station, and to Lynn Maki who has taken the position of Director of Admissions at the Vet School.
Speaking of Student Services... I'd like to bring everyone up to date on the reorganization plans for this important support unit. First of all, the office has been renamed the Office of Student and Academic Affairs (SAA) to better reflect the breadth and integration of activities. Jeanine Mount, in her role as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, has assumed the overarching leadership role. A new position has been created within SAA, that of Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, who will be responsible for coordinating the administration of student services programs, overseeing the School's advising system, providing leadership for achieving and maintaining the educational standards of the undergraduate and professional degrees at the School, and multiple related duties. A search for this position is underway. Other changes include the replacement for Lynn Maki, who will be in charge of admissions and also have a student advising role, and the addition of a 0.5 FTE assessment specialist. NOTE: The SAA staff will be holding an open house on Thursday, September 6 from 10:00-2:00. All faculty, staff, and students are invited to stop by for updates and refreshments. Rumors of interesting party games are circulating...
And speaking of assessment... The growing responsibility for assessment is clearly visible by the creation of the position in SAA, above, as well as in the establishment of a new Assessment Committee. There's simply too much to be done in this area to meet accreditation standards.
And speaking of new committees... The 2007-2008 committee roster and associated charges will be in your hands any day. Besides the creation of the Assessment Committee, you'll notice several other changes. The Minority Affairs in Pharmacy Program (MAPP) and Equity and Diversity Action (EDAC) Committees have been merged to form a new Diversity and Climate Committee. Likewise, the Health and Safety Committees have been merged to form, not surprisingly, the Health and Safety Committee. The Instrumentation Committee has been eliminated, and the Educational Policy and Planning Committee has been renamed the Curriculum Committee. And you'll see the four groups in charge of various aspects of our 125th anniversary celebration taking place throughout 2008. Thanks in advance to all committee members for your valuable contributions to the important work of the School. This is, very definitely, where the action is.
Before finally giving up its work for the year, the Academic Planning Council (APC) approved School membership in the Center of Patient Partnerships, a very interesting educational center run by Meg Gaines in the Law School dedicated to training future professionals in patient advocacy. The SOP is now also a part of the certificate program under development by the Center.
On the remodeling front... The conversion of 2341 RH from a classroom to a dry lab is complete. This room was designed to house important lab courses for the Pharm/Tox program but is available for other uses (labs/demos/other) as well. 2115 RH (former vending machines) is now a much-needed storage area. One of the four small study cubicles in the Commons has been removed to provide additional gathering space. Multiple remodeling projects are underway in the Tower to better fit the needs of our new faculty. I'm particularly interested in the development of Arash Bashirullah's "jungle room" (high heat and humidity) to keep his fruit flies happy. A microscopy facility, housing a new confocal microscope for shared use, is also under development. But the major lab conversions (4211, 5211, the Medicinal Chemistry Core Facility) are complete. We're also in the process of leasing almost 10,000 square feet of lab space in the K6 area on the third floor of the Clinical Sciences Center. Tim Heath and his research group will be the first occupants of this "Emeritus Lab" as Tim moves toward retirement.
My role as dean has brought many interesting, amazing, and unexpected experiences. Two of those occurred in the same week in August. First, I've described my meetings with various legislators in the "get to know" mode. I met in August with Reps. Steve Wieckert, Dan Kapanke, and Marlin Schneider or their staff...all extremely informative and interesting. However, the visit with Rep. Schneider was really amazing. He's known for his no nonsense approach, but he ended up giving me a personal tour of the Capitol including just about the entire history of the state of Wisconsin. I have never met anyone more knowledgeable. I even sat in the Governor's chair...darn cool. Second, as you know, CASI set up an SOP family outing at the Madison Mallards. I was given the opportunity (through no fault of my own) to throw out the first pitch at the game! For those that missed it, you'll be happy to know that I did not embarrass the School and actually made it to home plate and almost a strike to boot! All that softball over the years paid off apparently. Thanks very much to CASI for setting up this great opportunity to get together outside of the School. I believe they're already working on something for the fall like a hockey game or a volleyball match.
The public hearing on Assembly Bill 440 was held on Wednesday, August 15. Thanks very much to Dave Mott (SAS) for all the workforce data and documents and to DPH-4 students Katie Holmes and James Kloth who testified with me. This bill provides pharmacy student loan forgiveness to individuals who choose to practice in underserved areas of the state. There is considerable legislative support for the idea, but more work needs to be done to shape the program and how it will be administered.
Still no action on the state budget. This is very much the time to write to your legislators to weigh in on the negative impact of the Assembly budget, which proposes, among other things, a $120M cut to the UW System, of which $45.6M is targeted for UW-Madison. I'm organizing a letter writing campaign for our Board of Visitors members and other key stake holders around the state. Those of you that are alumni of UW will also be receiving a mailing from the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) with pre-addressed postcards to send in. Mail and phone call volume is important. I encourage you to add your voice as concerned citizens.
On a sad note...Peggy Wiederholt, widow of former faculty member Joe Wiederholt (SAS), let me know that Bob Sikora, formerly with Pfizer, recently passed away. Bob was a good friend of Joe's and directed considerable personal and corporate philanthropy to the funds established in his memory.
The Milwaukee Veteran Pharmacists Association (MVPA) invited me to their summer picnic. This is an amazing group of mostly retired pharmacists, almost all SOP alums, who have established an active and engaged group...apparently one of only three in the country. Among other things, they provide generous scholarship support for our students. It was a wonderful gathering of members and spouses and all sorts of great stories about the School and the faculty of their era.
Wishing you all a productive and enjoyable fall semester! Jeanette
Jeanette