Welcome to a New Year

I want to wish everyone a happy New Year and hope that you have had a great holiday. I’m looking forward to the coming year and all that it will bring. Many exciting and innovative pathways are before us, whether it is our new website, the selectives curriculum, or the core competency modules that we will begin to create. As highlighted below, I am thrilled to announce the hiring of our new CFO Edward Rodriguez. In the coming summer, we will move forward with a strategic planning process that will lay down the foundation for our continued success and excellence in the coming years. Please keep in mind that my door is always open.

• Our outstanding faculty continue to make us proud with their accomplishments. Congratulations to our former dean, Daryl Buss, who received the Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award from the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, and Karen Young, who received the Educator Award from the American Society for Veterinary Clinical Pathology.

• My sincere appreciation goes out to all those who made this year’s craft fair a success. Thank you to Kalen Nichols and Tom Bennett for coordinating the event, Jim Rose and Karen Mier for arranging the facilities, the volunteers for running the cash register, and everyone who contributed by making a purchase. Due to your efforts, $323 will go to the school’s Companion Animal Club.

• We had another enjoyable all-SVM get-together in December, and thanks to your generosity, it included an extremely successful donation drive for a local homeless shelter. As suggested by many of our faculty and staff, I would like to continue this effort in conjunction with future get-togethers. Each gathering will feature a collection station for an area shelter (animal or human). Please email your suggestions for shelters along with a list of needed items to me at deansoffice@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu and we will assign it to one of the upcoming gatherings and send out a call for donations a week in advance of the SVM get-together. When it’s your shelter’s turn, you will be responsible for taking the donations from the gathering to their destination. I hope you will all participate when you can. Together we can help a lot of people and animals. And just as a reminder, our next gathering is January 25.

• A group of our faculty have collaborated to form a new center at the school that will be devoted to diagnosing and providing advice on how to treat diseases of the mouth, face, and jaw in animals while also contributing to research and education about these conditions. The Center for Comparative Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology (CCOMP) will serve simultaneously as a diagnostic oral and maxillofacial laboratory and clinical consultation service for veterinarians. It will be staffed by Cindy Mattan-Bell, Jason Soukup, Tim Stein, and Dick Dubielzig. Right now, their goal is to enhance the visibility of their services to referring veterinarians and to build their repository of specimens, which will help further the school’s instructional and research goals. I encourage you to support them in their efforts in any way you can. You can learn more at CCOMP’s website and on the SVM news page.

• There are two professional development opportunities coming up in January that have been made possible by the hard work of our faculty. The 4th Annual Health Sciences Teaching Symposium will be held on January 17 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the Health Sciences Learning Center. This will be a good place to network and learn new, evidence-based teaching strategies. Thanks to Kristen Friedrichs and Helena Rylander for their roles in coordinating this event.
  
  On January 18, you have the opportunity to participate in the Signe Skott Cooper Symposium, Building a Foundation for Interprofessional Education, which offers people working in a variety of health science professions the opportunity to learn ways to improve patient care. Thanks to Calico Schmidt for serving on the planning committee for the symposium.

• I have a few personnel updates. Edward Rodriguez will be joining the school as our new chief financial officer and associate dean on February 11, 2013. Ed comes to us from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he has served as assistant to the provost for budget and planning since 2008. His 22 years of business, financial, and administrative experience in a university setting will no doubt serve the SVM well. Please join me in welcoming Ed to the school.
  
  The field has been narrowed for our new associate director of development position. Interviews will be held in January, and we hope to have the search completed by the end of the month.
  

• On the website redesign front, we are still making progress. Our team has developed and gathered a great deal of content, including text, photos, and videos, for the major sections of the website, and we will begin importing it all into our new template in January. We still hope to launch the new website in early 2013.
  
  

Dean Markel

Important Links

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Upcoming Events

SVM Get-Together
January 25, 2012
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Veterinary Medicine Building (Second Floor Lounge)

North American Veterinary Conference Alumni Reception
January 20, 2013
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. at the Orlando World Center Marriott (Washington Room)
Orlando, Fla.

Western Veterinary Conference Alumni Reception
February 18, 2013
7:30 to 9:00 p.m. (Room TBD)
Las Vegas, Nev.