News from the self-study and reaccreditation:
The finalized External Team Report (ETR) came in last week and can be found at http://pharmacy.wisc.edu/acpe ... all 111 pages of it! The ACPE Board held their January meeting some time ago, and we’re waiting for the final word from them. Extension Services has a separate ACPE accreditation process and timeline, and they are also waiting for results from the January meeting.
Time to really get a couple new things in place and functioning!!

News from the State:
No news yet about another mid-year budget cut, but we continue to have options in our minds if this does transpire. As you’re all aware, the effort to recall Governor Walker accumulated more signatures than was required, and those signatures are now being verified. The ultimate outcome and its impact on UW and the SOP remain unclear. And so it goes…

News from Bascom Hall:
Chancellor Ward and other UW leaders continue to refine their thinking around three major areas to address budget gaps: 1) expanding private giving with the express need to apply such funds to operational costs; 2) continuing to identify and address inefficiencies in various administrative functions; and 3) Educational Innovation…an examination of our academic programs and their delivery to both save money and generate new revenue. As I’ve said before, we have been doing all of these things within the SOP to varying degrees for some time, but we need to continue to ramp up our efforts. Thank you for thinking creatively to optimize everything we do and actually expand our reach with new and innovative programs, audiences, and delivery methods.

Keep calm and carry on!

The Midyear Meeting of ASHP seems like a long time ago, but there was so much going on involving our faculty, students, and alumni! We started by gathering to watch the first Big 10 championship game vs. Michigan State, which worked out very nicely, thank you very much. (The Rose Bowl appearance…not so much.) The Wisconsin Reception was the busiest ever! Marty Kieser and Connie Kraus (PPD) participated in the Residency Showcase, Jim DeMuth (ESP) did an all-day statistics workshop, Steve Rough (PPD/UWHC) facilitated a panel discussion, and on and on. Of very special note, Chris Sorkness→ (PPD/ICTR) received the 2011 ASHP Literature Award for Sustained Contributions (from alum and ASHP president, Lynnae Mahaney). Also, UWHC Pharmacy received the ASHP Research and Education Foundation 2011 Award for Excellence in Medication-Use Safety. Awesome!

Our beautiful new Hamacher Pharmacy Learning Center and Academic Programs Office are open for business! There are many bugs to work out yet, but take a look if you haven’t already. The ribbon cutting ceremony, including Bucky Badger himself, was a blast! Thanks for your patience during construction and for all the work by so many. Pictures soon!

Special news!! I’ve very pleased to announce the creation of the UW Center for Nanomedicine with an initial start-up budget of $1M provided by numerous campus partners and private donors. The leadership of the Center includes John Kao, Glen Kwon, and Sandro Mecozzi (~CEO); additional members will be added to comprise an advisory board as things develop. The mission of the Center is to promote research, teaching, and outreach in the field of nanomedicine devoted to nano-technologies and related enabling biomedical technologies that advance translational efforts in drug development. This is going to be great!!

Items on the “save the date list” include:

• New: The next meeting of the Executive Committee will be held on Tuesday, February 13 at noon in room 1128.
• New: Nominations for the Academic and Classified Staff Awards are due to Laurie by February 29.
• New: The annual APhA meeting is coming right up, March 9-12, in New Orleans. I will be hosting the annual Dinner with the Dean for all UW faculty, staff, and students on Saturday, March 10 at Tujague's (823 Decatur St.) at 7:00. The festive Wisconsin reception will be held Sunday, March 11 at the Hilton Riverside, Grand Salon 3/6, from 5:00-7:00. Come and join me and our many alums!
• New: Applications and nominations for the Apple, Carstensen, Hammel/Sanders, and Weinswig Chairs are due to Bill Mellon by April 1.
• New: The annual Kremers Lecture, featuring Dean Marilyn Speedie from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, will be held on Tuesday, April 10 in 2002/2006 with a reception following. Like last year, this year’s teaching award winners will be honored at the lecture.
• New: The Ebling Library will host the 6th Annual Health Sciences Student Art Exhibit from April 12 to May 4, with an opening reception on Thursday, April 12 from 4:00-6:00. I shouldn’t be amazed by the talents of our students, but this is really interesting!

Recent faculty highlights that have crossed my desk:

• Thanks to Betty Chewning (SAS) for serving as a reviewer for the AACP New Investigator Awards.
• Thanks also to Jill Kolesar (PPD) for serving as a reviewer for the Am J Health-Syst Pharm last year.
• Congrats to Tim Bugni (PharmSci) for being selected to proceed to the second stage and submit a full application to the 2012 Beckman Young Investigator program.
• Also to the successful applicants for Research Committee funding from the Grad School: Lara Collier, Lingjun Li, and Sandro Mecozzi (PharmSci).
• More congrats to John Kao (PharmSci) for being selected in the first round of funding for the new Vilas Distinguished Service Professors for the excellence of his work and its impact.
• And to John Dopp (PPD) for funding of his U01 application…woohoo!

Notable notes from our staff:

• Ed Elder (ZPES) recently returned from a trip to the University of Nizwa in Oman. He was an invited speaker at the first international conference entitled “Pharmacy Education in the Era of Globalisation.”
• Elaine Stroud (AIHP) will be traveling to Oxford, England soon as an invited participant in a symposium on the natural philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. The title of her presentation is “Lines of Vision: A Construction Integrating Physics, Geometry, and Psychology.” Now tell me we don’t have interesting people around here!
• A new Alschafl has been born! Congratulations to Jeremy (SAA) and his wife Beth on the birth of their second son, Chase.
• Joan Palmer’s (PharmSci/Research Admin) son, Matt Heindl, and his partner, Biggie Lemke, recently opened The Naked Elm bakery and café in Blue Mounds. RAVE reviews for their wood-fired brick oven pizzas, etc. Check it out! Joan even got to assist with the project. A woman of many talents…

From students, residents, and trainees:

• Congratulations on the successful defense of PhD dissertations by:
• Rita Buresh (PharmSci, Marker group)
• Monica Hwang (SAS, Young group)
• Ho Chul Shin (PharmSci, Kwon group)
• Congrats also to Megan Heim (DPH-4) for being selected for the One-to-One Student Pharmacist recognition. Megan will receive complementary registration, travel and lodging for the APhA annual meeting in March in New Orleans.
• And to Alex Gooding (TOX-4) for being accepted into the MD/PhD program at Case Western…nice!
• Thanks to Brett Kopina (PharmSci, Lauhon group) for representing the SOP in the WARF Ambassador Program. They are hosting a Discovery Challenge, as well as a graduate student summit and reception, called thrive. Contact Brett for more info.
• Postdoctoral fellow, Jessica Plavicki (PharmSci, Heideman group), does a lot of confocal imagery, which is amazingly beautiful in addition to be scientifically important. Her work was selected as Picture of the Day by Science360. See http://news.science360.gov/obj/pic-day/b121c5e8-0eb0-40eb-96ec-8531c6266eb6.
• We kicked off “Phase DPH-2” of our student philanthropy program recently by providing an SOP piggy bank to each member of the class. The students will be able to Feed the Pig! for the rest of the semester. We’ll then get back together, eat pizza, count money, and add substantially to the Class of 2014 Fund that they started last year at the DPH-1 orientation. There will also be a prize for the Best Dressed Pig (i.e., coolest decorations).

Not to mention our amazing alumni:

• I had a chance to see a few alums/Clinical Instructors during a recent visit to Stevens Point: Todd Faulks, Julie Babbitt, and Jessica Marshall. More excellent reports on our students on rotations!
• PharmSci PhD alum, Kwadwo Owusu-Ofori, is participating in the Global Scholars Program organized by the Kauffman Foundation. He is in the process of incorporating a new company aimed at developing dietary supplements that will increase the effectiveness of medications for tropical diseases.
• Congratulations to alums Jim Klauck and Arlene Iglar on their recent election as delegates to ASHP. They join alums Terry Audley and Steve Rough who are also elected delegates.
• Dave and I (along with new DoD Adam Kindschy and his fiancé Lindsay Williamson) had the pleasure of hosting alums, Marla Ahlgrimm and her partner Renee Dorazio, Donna Lotzer, Sandy Sobczak, Sarah Sorum and her husband Matt, and Jeff Williams and his wife Connie, in the Chancellor’s Suite for the women’s hockey game vs. Bemiji State.
• Dave and I also had the opportunity to visit alum Mike Makoid and his wife Bette Evans in their new home in Santa Fe. What are the chances? They chose a home only a mile or two from where we lived when I was doing a postdoc at Los Alamos National Lab.
• I had a wonderful dinner with alum Leon Lachman and his wife Joan near their home in Manhassat, NY. Leon continues to aggressively fund his growing grad student fellowship, which will reach full funding in a year or two.
• After my annual meeting in Tucson with the deans of the research-intensive schools of pharmacy, Dave, Linda Halsey (former DoD), Adam Kindschy (new DoD), and I had a wonderful time visiting alumni and friends in Tucson (Thora Vervoren and professor emerita Bonnie Svarstad), Green Valley (Milt Henricks, Phyllis Tingstad, Leona Sonderegger, Susie Kies Bazzell and her husband Mark, along with Tom and Mary Kies, and Mike and Karen Moioffer), and Phoenix (Bob Dixon, Dave and Miriam Sanders, and Earl and Betty Sallander)…wow!

I have a feeling I missed a lot of things… Anyway, I hope everyone is off to a great start for the semester. Thanks again for working so well together after the nasty flood recently. Everything should be back to normal (!) by next week. Engineers are involved to address the root cause(s) of our multiple floods over the years…about time.

Take care…Jeanette