Messages from the deans of the Southern California College of Optometry, the College of Health Sciences and the College of Pharmacy.
Southern California College of Optometry
by Stanley Woo, OD, MS, MBA
With the retirements of Drs. Berman, Voorhees and Brookman we continue our leadership transition for SCCO. At the university level, we’re delighted to welcome Dr. Carmen Barnhardt as the new Vice President for Student Affairs. Dr. Julie Schornack transitioned to her new role as Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff for MBKU.
The SCCO leadership team includes Dr. Stanley Woo, Dean; Dr. John Nishimoto, Senior Associate Dean for Professional Affairs; Dr. Mark Nakano, Associate Dean for Clinics (assuming responsibility for the University Eye Center clinic enterprise); Dr. Raymond Chu, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Dr. Harue Marsden, Associate Dean for Clinical Education and Director of Outreach; Dr. Jerry Paugh, Associate Dean for Research; Dr. Jane Ann Munroe, Assistant Dean for Admissions; Dr. Judy Tong, Assistant Dean for Residencies; and Dr. William Ridder, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies.
Dawn of a New Age
The University Eye Center is located at the brand-new Ketchum Health building. The whole spectrum of optometric clinical services, subspecialty care and research now take place at Ketchum Health, where over 90% of the SCCO faculty are now located. We are also negotiating with the a large ophthalmology group to provide a full range of services that will also incorporate clinical education and research partnerships with SCCO. Early reports from patients who have followed us from Fullerton have been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic.
Student Recruitment and Retention
The Office of Admissions team is diligently working on initiatives to recruit and retain a robust, diverse and highly qualified cohort of candidates for SCCO. Because of the challenge of rising tuition and student debt, we are embarking on a new initiative to raise 10 new recruitment scholarships of $10,000 each. If you, your class, your colleagues, your business or others would like to bundle your donations, we’ll meet our goal in no time. We hope that we can count on your support as well as your referrals since our alumni are the best recruiters!
What Does the Future Hold?
As life begins to settle down for SCCO faculty, staff and students, we will begin the process of mapping out the future of the college. What will optometric practice look like 10 or 20 years from now? How do we best prepare our graduates? How do we face the challenges? We’ll reach out to alumni and other stakeholders to identify the current state of the profession and institution, followed by a series of activities to help identify milestones for the future. We look forward to your participation and feedback. As always, we continue to work collectively to make you proud of your alma mater and look forward to hearing from you.
College of Health Sciences
by Judy Ortiz, PhD, PA-C
The School PA Studies faculty and staff are enjoying teaching and mentoring our PA students to become qualified, capable, community-engaged health care providers. Our inaugural students are wrapping up their clinical rotations and are preparing to graduate in November. By graduation, we anticipate that all students will experience a clinical rotation with an underserved population. They have been remarkable ambassadors for MBKU.
The Class of 2017 is finishing up their didactic coursework and soon will be completing their Master’s Capstone Projects. The Master’s Capstone Project was developed with our school values and goals in mind and offers our students the invaluable experience of community outreach by developing and implementing an intervention that addresses a specific health care need within our community.
In August, we welcomed our third PA class to Ketchum University. As is our tradition, we began by engaging them in community service through participation in a joint humanitarian event with all PA students, faculty and staff and propagating random acts of kindness throughout our local community.
Interprofessional education opportunities are expanding as we also welcomed pharmacy students to MBKU this fall. Interprofessional education occurs when two or more professions learn with, about and from each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Our goal is to give students opportunities to learn actively and practice teamwork and communication skills with each other. All the interprofessional curricula are taught collaboratively by faculty members in our three colleges: optometry, PA and pharmacy.
As Ketchum Health grows to include a medical clinic and pharmacy, students will participate in interprofessional collaborative care that is led by MBKU clinical faculty members from all three colleges. Interprofessional collaboration has been shown to improve patient care and safety, along with improving provider and patient satisfaction. Creating an interprofessional approach to health care will unite our clinicians to provide better care delivery for our patients. The future is exciting at MBKU!
College of Pharmacy
by Edward Fisher, PhD, RPh
The summer of 2016 has been a very electrifying time for the College of Pharmacy at Marshall B. Ketchum University. All the hard work of the faculty and staff of the college paid off as in June we were awarded Precandiate status by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). This status allows us to matriculate students, and in August we did so by welcoming our inaugural class of student pharmacists.
The first-year curriculum will be administered in the multi-purpose room at the brand-new, state-of-the-art facility, Ketchum Health. This room will be outfitted with round tables and chairs conducive to active-learning scenarios that our college will feature.
The College of Pharmacy continues to grow as we have been busy hiring faculty members and administrative assistants. It is our goal during the upcoming academic year to hire seven more faculty members, four in pharmacy practice, three in pharmaceutical sciences and one more administrative assistant. Many of our faculty members attended the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy held in July in Anaheim, California, where it was proclaimed publically that we are now an accredited college of pharmacy. I was deeply humbled by the announcement introducing me to this esteemed group as the new Dean of the College of Pharmacy at Marshall B. Ketchum University.
We all look forward to the completion of the Health Professions Building scheduled for spring 2017, so that our students, staff and faculty can advance academic coursework and interprofessional learning right at the campus.
My transition from Hilo, Hawaii, to Fullerton, California, has been a smooth process and I am discovering the many opportunities that exist in Southern California.