More About the Program

Last Friday, I was honored at the Annual Faculty/Staff Recognition Dinner on the Downers Grove Campus for my 15 years of service to Midwestern University. Yes, I started working here when I was 18. Just kidding. But it is hard to believe that 15 years have gone by.

There is a common expression taught in medical schools that says: "If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras." I thought of this phrase in relation to a recent health episode with my cat.

Last Friday, MWU hosted its annual Downers Grove Golf Classic to raise funds for student scholarships. Nearly 100 golfers joined us for a hot but fun day on the links. And my team won second place!

If you visit MWU this summer, you may notice a lot of people walking all over campus. Why? Take a group of health-oriented, competitive-leaning people, arm them with free pedometers, give them a team challenge, and lots of stepping is the result!

MWU's own Courtney Sullivan, Manager of Marketing, blogger, and web site maven, gave birth yesterday to her latest and most likely best little market research project: Baby Quinn!

I am not going to lie--August in Phoenix is miserable. Not only is it hot, but it tends to get humid, particularly during the monsoon. The good news, though, is that relief is only two hours away.

Today, September 16th, marked the kick off of the, We're MWU Proud Campaign on the Downers Grove Campus.

The school year is off and running, and I realize it has been many weeks since my last blog. Between orientations and graduations and recognition dinners, it has been hard to keep up!

This afternoon, many MWU students, faculty, and staff lined up to donate blood at the Downers Grove Campus. The line was pretty long, which was a good thing.

On Saturday, MWU's Glendale Campus hosted the annual American Diabetes Association Stepping Out for Diabetes Walk. About 1,000 people gathered on our campus for one of only two twilight ADA walks in the country. I was honored to be one of the walkers on Team MWU.

A few weeks ago, the Office of Development & Alumni Relations launched the We're MWU Proud Campaign at both of our campuses. This effort has two goals: to promote team spirit and morale on campus and to provide opportunities for MWU employees to financially support scholarships, campus beautification, or areas of greatest need. Halfway through the campaign, it is clear that we have been successful in achieving both.

From the Halloween revelers on Bourbon Street to the physician educators in the convention center, New Orleans was the place to be this week for the 2009 American Osteopathic Association Convention. Many MWU students, alumni, faculty, and staff visited the Big Easy to participate in the many activities.

As the year draws to a close, I wanted to take a brief minute in my blog to thank my wonderful team for all they do to make Midwestern University such a special place. These are the staff you--our alumni, prospective students, applicants, the media, and the general public--are most likely to encounter at the University. And they make me very proud each and every day.

I've declared my motto to be "No More Excuses 2010". As everyone does each start of a new year, we vow to make certain changes in our lives.

After several months of ground preparation and foundation work, the shape of Science Hall is finally rising over the campus.

With temperatures in the 80s, it finally feels like spring on the Downers Grove Campus. While the weather is an important indicator, what truly is more reflective of the season is the activities of the wildlife on our campus. And, this spring, we have a baby owl!

Last week, MWU students, faculty, and staff on the Downers Grove Campus had the opportunity to add their name to a piece of campus history. Dr. G invited the entire campus community to a "Topping Off Party" and beam-signing for our new Science Hall.

The Glendale Campus recently hosted the second annual Alumni Homecoming Picnic, which featured the AZCOM Class of 2000's 10-year reunion.

MWU's Downers Grove Campus held its annual Chippin' in for Students golf outing last Friday on a beautiful summer day with a full course of golfers.

A small, unremarkable white house sits at the northern edge of MWU's Glendale Campus - a reminder of how far the University has come in a very short time.

I love my job. I work with wonderful people, I am intrigued by my work, and the benefits are outstanding. But the best part about it may be that one of my colleagues is my father.

Once a year, the Midwestern University administration team assembles faculty and staff to thank them for all they do for the school. Personally, I think we should all return the favor.

Last week I had my first chance to experience a Town Hall meeting with Dr. Goeppinger, and it was an illuminating experience.

I should have been thinking about turkey - but I found that I was thinking about work. And it was in a good way, too.

Twice this week I have had conversations with two different friends about the value of giving back and the importance of being grateful.

I've spent quite a bit of time over the past couple of weeks across the street at the Midwestern University Dental and Eye Institutes, and I have to say I'm impressed.

Don't get me wrong; I love time off as much as the next person... but it's a new year here at Midwestern University's Glendale Campus, and am I ever glad to be back at work!

The world tries to give us all the evidence we could want that human beings are only capable of ugliness. Reality, though, proves otherwise - and the proof is closer to you than you might expect.

Passion is a far more active noun than the verbs to like or to enjoy. Passion implies dedication, absorption, commitment, and a single-minded focus on something that springs from a foundation of deep love.

If you have a TV, a radio, or a Facebook friend from Chicago, you probably noticed we had a big blizzard this week. Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. SnOMG. Or, as we locals like to say, winter.

Renovations are beginning on the cafeteria here on the Glendale Campus. Working in Barrel Student Center III, right next door to Barrel Student Center II where the cafeteria resides, I have a ringside seat to the construction.

If you ask me, the only thing that would make paying for a round of golf better is if by doing so you could improve someone's life by doing so. That's where Midwestern University's Chippin' In for Students 2011 Golf Classic on March 21st comes in.

I guess I should have expected it. I knew, after all, what a gross anatomy lab was for. So I probably shouldn't have been freaked out when I opened the door. Shouldn't have been, but was anyway.

Sometimes, there is a big gap between the time you spend preparing for something and the actual time that thing takes to happen.

There’s a somewhat sublime feeling you get driving down the road at four-thirty in the morning. If you ask me, it’s due to fatigue. What there is a lot of at four-thirty in the morning is coffee. Anyone up that early – for any reason – is usually drinking some to stay awake. The sad few who don’t drink coffee, of course, have to resort to other methods.

When we showed up at the Arrowhead Country Club for the Chippin' in for Students Golf Classic after a week of bright sun, no clouds, and mid 80-degree temperatures, we discovered it was blustery, heavily overcast, cold, and raining.

The Midwestern University version of "summit fever" has some of the same elements as the mountaineering version - drive, dedication, a willingness to overlook hardship - but instead of warping our perspective and putting us at risk, our version helps to clarify our outlook and sharpen our focus for success.

It's nice to be part of events like Cuts for Kids or the recent Give Kids a Smile event put on by the College of Dental Medicine-Arizona to help us feel a connection to the generous giving spirit of our student body.

Fresh out of college, I spent a couple of years living and working in and around Boston, Massachusetts. When my family and I arrived in the city, we discovered that we had landed squarely in the middle of "The Big Dig." Those three words, a nickname for the nearly two-decade-long Central Artery/Tunnel Project in metro Boston, still strike fear into the hearts of anyone who lived in that city during the hectic days of the Dig.

It is amazing how one baby can so significantly alter a pair of lives. We would learn, of course, that each new child took us further down that road of schedule juggling, asset managing, and freedom restricting - until our entire lives were centered around those young, beautiful kids who had monopolized our lives.

It’s never fun when a co-worker moves on – even less so when said co-worker is as terrific a person as Courtney Sullivan, Midwestern University’s Director of Marketing.

It's nesting season at our Downers Grove Campus, and, appropriately, one of our mother geese welcomed her chicks this week.

The cardiovascular perfusion (CVSP) program here in Glendale held an open house on Wednesday, and there was no way I was missing it. I love open houses as a rule, but this one particularly fascinated me both because, of all the programs here at Midwestern University, I had the least direct exposure to perfusion, and also because heart surgery fascinates me.

During the past week, we in the Communications Office have pitched in along with other departments across the Glendale Campus to help review applications for the upcoming Health Careers Institute to be held here in July. The HCI is an eight-day “camp” of sorts that allows high school students to get better acquainted with the field of medicine, the programs we offer here at Midwestern University, and avenues they can explore for future careers.

Time flies! I can't believe that in December of this year, I would have been working at Midwestern University for ten years.

My job for Graduation Day for the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine (AZCOM) and select programs of the College of Health Sciences (CHS-AZ) was to be The Greeter in the Glendale Campus Auditorium lobby. That was my official title. My unofficial title was "The Bouncer."

Dr. Goeppinger, our University President and CEO, sent us an e-mail after Memorial Day and let us know that we add Casual Mondays to our week, joining Casual Fridays for the balance of the summer until Labor Day. "The two day a week business casual is designed to make the summer more relaxed," she wrote.

You'll forgive me for dwelling on the subject of graduation, but June has certainly been the month for them here on Midwestern University's Glendale Campus. In today's blog, though, I want to focus on one specific part of our graduation ceremonies - the bagpipers.

The first indication that you get that these are not run-of-the-mill high school students is when the lecturer starts asking questions – hard questions. Questions to which you personally don’t remember ever knowing the answers.

A haboob is an Arabic term that refers to a strong and sudden sandstorm, but usually you hear about them popping up in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, not Arizona. But I suppose it is in keeping with the very strange weather this year all across the world that Phoenix has had not one, but two haboobs move through the city in the past month.

The other day, I cracked my blinds open to discover that not only had the new wall across the way been painted… it had also been decorated and touched up with brickwork. Then, a few days later, I found that a brand new sidewalk had materialized between Barrel II and Barrel III, almost as if it had erupted there from a secret underground concrete volcano that none of us knew about.

There are very good reasons why I never worked in clothing retail in my otherwise eclectic professional life.

On August 2, Midwestern University broken ground on its new clinical campus in Downers Grove, which is scheduled to open in spring of 2013.

In the eleven months I’ve worked at Midwestern University, I have been involved in a lot of publicity efforts involving our two new clinics.

By any account, Science Hall is an impressive building: architecturally, structurally, height, function, size. But perhaps its most important attribute is its purpose for our students and faculty.

The look in my wife's eyes as I walked in the door on Friday spelled trouble. Not the standard "The cat is barfing on the carpet" trouble or "Our daughter didn't do her homework again" trouble. This was, "Something is very wrong, and I'm very scared." In other words, TROUBLE.

BAGELS! BAGELS AND COFFEE!! Oh yes, the Glendale Campus faculty and staff who showed up for our recent Coffee and Conversation at the still-in-progress-but-nearly-complete new cafeteria in Barrel Student Center II were flocking to the food table in droves.

One of the highlights of the annual dinner is when Dr. Goeppinger announces the Littlejohn Award winners. Named after the founders of the osteopathic school that eventually became Midwestern University in Illinois, the Littlejohn Awards are the University's highest honor. Each year, they are handed out to a faculty member, a staff member, and an alumnus.

One thing I have been impressed with since I started working at Midwestern University is the patient-centered focus that all of the programs have espoused. In particular, I want to talk about the Midwestern Clinical Psychology program. Part of the College of Health Sciences, Clinical Psychology is one of the newer programs to the University, having graduated its first class only this past summer.

The community was the star of Midwestern University's annual Bright Lights, Shining Stars Gala, held last weekend at the Glendale Campus.

On Saturday, October 15, the Midwestern University Glendale Campus turned into a glamorous al fresco entertainment plaza for the annual Bright Lights, Shining Stars gala. Bright Lights, Shining Stars is a black-tie-optional event that raises money for Midwestern University student scholarships. Guests are treated to live music, cocktails, a sumptuous dinner, and a silent auction in addition to an awards ceremony that bestows honors upon community leaders for their service and students who have won Spirit of Service scholarships.

This week, I was given the opportunity to sit in on a round of peer debates that the Midwestern University Physical Therapy program held with its first-year students. A bit of background here - I was on the speech team in high school, so I had the chance to observe these kinds of formal debates extensively. I always thought the format was fascinating even though I never tried it myself.

A funny thing happened when I went to visit my father at the Midwestern University Dental Institute the other day. I noticed that after the staff would give me their friendly welcoming smiles, they would sneak a peek behind me. Like I was being followed. I quickly figured out why – they have come to expect that when I drop by for a visit, I’m usually bringing along someone from the media.

Midwestern University's annual Thanksgiving Breakfast was held on Wednesday, November 16, and once again the faculty and staff of the Glendale Campus came together to enjoy some good food and great raffle prizes presented by the University's admin team.

This week, Midwestern University’s President and CEO Dr. Kathleen Goeppinger held one of her recurring Town Hall meetings on the Glendale Campus.

One of the projects our department is working on is designing a Midwestern University mobile website for smartphones. Midwestern University students will be able to access important MWU information just by pulling their phones out of their pockets and tapping a touchscreen.

Ninety-six... ninety-seven... ninety-eight... ninety-nine... We looked at each other hopefully across the table as the last stragglers lined up at the Cafeteria door. ONE MORE!! we seemed to be saying to each other telepathically as we struggled not to laugh out loud.

Not too far from Midwestern University’s Downers Grove campus, a new multi-story building is being constructed that will eventually be the Midwestern University Clinic.

One of the advantages of having a faculty as experienced and diverse as we have at Midwestern University is that they are often asked by local media to provide expertise on various healthcare topics. I never fail to be fascinated by the amount of hard work that goes into creating such a small window of televised reporting.