In Our Programs....

Admissions

The Office of Admissions staff made a commitment to expand their knowledge regarding justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) as part of their weekly staff meetings. Beginning in January 2022 admissions implemented a hot topics session twice a month during staff meetings and added two extended staff meetings twice a month to participate in a justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion activity. The hot topic sessions gives admissions staff an opportunity to freely discuss any trending topics or themes that are affecting individuals or their work. In terms of activities they have discussed adapting a JEDI mission, read a comic book by the birdwatcher Christian Cooper, and read/discussed a chapter from A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota to name a few. The team has had great discussions and looks forward to continuing these efforts! 

Graduate Medical Education

GME held new resident/fellow orientation on June 17 and July 1, and welcomed over 300 new trainees to the U of MN.  This is the first in person orientation since 2019.  We were thrilled.  Abbreviated sessions will be held via Zoom on July 7 and August 1.

Resident Leadership Academy (RLA) , under the leadership of Dr. Kaz Nelson and Dr. Margot Zarin-Pass, recently brought its 8th cohort together with a capstone event at the Minnesota Humanities Center. The aims of the RLA are to: 1. Teach skills relevant to organizational leadership to a promising group of residents, 2. Engage this group of residents in institutional goals and priorities, where they can play a significant contributing role, and 3. Invest in the development of trainees who have the potential to be future leaders at this institution beyond their residency training.

Every month the Office of Graduate Medical Education celebrates our partnerships by spotlighting individuals across the University and community that help us achieve our vision and hold our core values.  Recent recipients of the award include Marianne Watters and Monica Rogers.  Marianne and Monica have been incredible to work with as they provided support for the RLA and other GME activities over the last 9 months during staffing transitions.  We are grateful for their support. 

The 2nd annual national GME Professionals Day will be celebrated August 19.  Stay tuned for more information about this important day.

Mortuary Science

The Program of Mortuary Science has been "on the road" the past few weeks, participating in both the Minnesota and Wisconsin State Funeral Director Association Annual Meetings.  It is always good to connect with friends and alumni, and provide both program updates and continuing education to attendees.

Vice Dean's Office

Events Office:  

In May we celebrated the class of 2022 graduates at the Commencement Ceremony. We were lucky to have beautiful weather to mark the occasion. Thank you to the numerous staff volunteers across OME who helped at Commencement. We couldn't do it without you! 

Medical Student Orientation is coming up fast - starting August 12! August 12 will be community-building for the incoming class, August 15-18 will be content heavy sessions, and Friday, August 19 will be the White Coat Ceremony. Stay tuned for volunteer opportunities throughout Orientation! On Tuesday, August 16, we'll be hosting a social event off-campus. Staff and faculty are warmly invited to attend and welcome our new students in a more casual environment! 

MEOC/MEDS:  SIME (Student Internship in Medical Education) is in full swing for the summer. The students, mentors and projects in the program are as follows:

1) Youngjae Park

Mentors: Liz Sopdie, Kirby Clark (RPAP/MetroPAP)

Project: Advanced Surgery & Procedures Curriculum & Longitudinal Assessment Review

2) Sam Newell

Mentors: Mark Rosenberg, Caroline Hilk (Office of Vice Dean)

Project: HealthEdToGo

3) Habibatu Ighile

Mentor: Susan Culican (GME)

4) Taylor Krivanek

Mentor: Aubie Shaw (Med School-DU Campus)

Project: Weekly review sessions for beginning medical students in pre-clinical training

5) Carly Miller

Mentors: Claudio Violato, Jackie Gauer, Eric Martin LaPlant ( Assessment & Evaluation)

Project: Pulse Survey and Big Five Inventory Data Analysis 

6) Katelyn Sawyer

Mentors: Kristina Krohn, Beth Scudder, Megan Shaugnessy, Brett Hendel-Paterson (Medicine)

Project: Global Medicine Clinical Tropical Medicine & Online Global Health Curriculum (1 of 2) 

7) Katie McLaughlin

Mentors: Kristina Krohn, Beth Scudder, Megan Shaugnessy, Brett Hendel-Paterson (Medicine)

Project: Global Medicine Clinical Tropical Medicine & Online Global Health Curriculum (2 of 2) 

8) Harmanpreet Kaur

Mentor: Brian Muthyala (Gen. Internal Med.)

Project: DEI Medical Education Project (1 of 2)

9) Austen Ott

Mentor: Brian Muthyala (Gen. Internal Med.)

Project: DEI Medical Education Project (2 of 2)

10) Zoe Gabrielson

Mentors: Scott Slattery, Shannon Nelson, Maryanne Reilly-Spong (Office of Learner Dev.)

Project: Student Wellness and Wellbeing (1 of 2)

11) Glenn Seela

Mentors: Scott Slattery Shannon Nelson, Maryanne Reilly-Spong (Office of Learner Dev.)

Project:  Peer Mentorship

12) DivineMercy Bakare

Mentors: Scott Slattery Shannon Nelson, Maryanne Reilly-Spong (Office of Learner Dev.)

Project: Student Wellness and Wellbeing  (2 of 2)

13) Sara Busche

Mentor: Andrew Olson (Peds Hospital Medicine)

Project:  EHR meta-data research project 

14) Madeline Marker

Mentors: Scott Davenport, Scott Slattery (Student Affairs)

Project: "Houses"

***Save the date!! Final Presentations at the August 17 Works in Progress meeting.  More info to come...

Our student interns work on a variety of projects and tasks throughout OME.  The work they do has a big impact in the programs they work in - they are invaluable!  Here a few examples...

"When he is not working on space robots (if you get a chance to ask him about rovers on the dark side of the moon it sounds like a very cool project), Ashton [Posey] is working with the Evaluation arm of the A&E team for a second summer. He does a great job processing the large amount of data we work with for the course evaluations and Annual Course Review (ACR). This helps us get reports out on time and provide information to course directors and the curriculum team to make data driven decisions that improves the educational experience."  [Eric Martin LaPlant - Assessment & Evaluation] 

"Stella [Schwartz] has been amazing to work with; she is the primary person running our medical student onboarding account now, and she does everything so professionally. She has such a positive attitude which makes her fun to work with as well. I have come to rely on her a lot in a short time; I'm so thankful for her!" [Janell Lopez - Curriculum] 

"Aiyana [Basa] is an important member of the Office of Graduate Medical Education.  She supports the team with a number of activities ranging from processing a variety of onboarding, advancing and graduating resident/fellow requirements, to audit review to assistance with tracking regular ACGME notifications. Aiyana is accountable, resourceful, solutions oriented and a pleasure to work with.  We couldn't do what we do without her!" [Heather W-GME]

"Stella is able to manage multiple ongoing projects. She exceeds expectations, completing tasks early with great attention to detail. Stella's positive attitude and willingness to try are invaluable. She truly is a stellar addition to the team!"  [Ashley Mishek - Mort. Sci.] 

Our interns do incredible work.  Please continue send me their successes on projects that they have worked on to help your team - I want to continue to recognize them in The Pulse! 

Remember:  If and when you are interested in requesting assistance for short-term or long-term projects or for onsite events/projects,  or if you need ongoing assistance in your program please complete the “Request for Remote Work” form or contact Marianne (mwatters@umn.edu)  

Link to upcoming events from Staff Advancing Diversity and Inclusion (SADI)

WEDDINGS!!

Social Group Email List Revived!

Several years ago OME staff joined a Social Group listserv so that they could communicate plans for happy hours, wedding/baby showers, volunteer activities, Twins game outings, etc.  When COVID hit, we lost our ability to get together and participate in some of these fun activities.  The time has come for us to put a little life back into this Social Group listserv so that we can begin planning these get-togethers again!

If you are new and would be interested in joining this group, please contact Marianne Watters (mwatters@umn.edu) and she will add you to the Google email group.  Once you are a member, you can start sending emails to the group!  The email for the group is omesocialgroup-mwatters@umn.edu.  

Recommendations

Rachel Rudeen's favorite podcast is "You're Wrong About" and was listening to an episode that she thought others would enjoy.  The episode title is "How Email Took Over the World."  She found it relevant to some of the conversations she's had with colleagues about setting boundaries with email and trying to achieve a work/life balance.  

Hannah Carter highly recommends, "St. Paul Parks and Rec's learn-to-sail program at Lake Phalen! I'm currently taking lessons and it's an absolute blast." 

Staff-owned Airbnb!!

Christy and her partner Rick opened their second Airbnb in May 2022 in Finland, Minnesota. Balsam Haus is 3 miles from Hwy1 /Lake Superior, 5 minutes from Tettegouche State Park! The haus has 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, kitchen, living and dining room. A third studio in Brainerd is in the works, and hopefully will be available in July 2022! 

Check out their Finland and Brainerd AirBNB's : linktr.ee/christysairbnbs 

Special Note:  Marianne W. stayed in the Brainerd Airbnb last October and it was lovely!  Great location and perfect for a long weekend getaway!

Reminder! Keep adding these recipes to our Remotely Good Recipe book!   Looking for appetizer recipes and BBQ recipes for grilling!

• "Kudos to Dr. Esther Dale for dedication above and beyond her duties as Chair of the Institutional Assessment Committee, directing the Y2 OSCE and the Clinical Competency Assessment (CCA) and directing  the development of the Item Bank development, in addition to her own usual hectic work. " [Claudio Violato]

• "Kudos to Mohammed Abulela and Esther Dale for their research work in psychometrics that will be presented at the Association of Medical Education of Europe (AMEE) congress in Lyon, France this August."  [Claudio Violato]  

• "Kudos and HUGE thanks to Hailey Kassulker and Marianne Watters for ramping up as Purchasing Experts and helping me with A&E contracts and purchasing at the end of FY22 - always a daunting task, but especially challenging this year! "I couldn't have done it without you" doesn't begin to cover it! " [Cynthia Johnson]

• "To Jackie Gauer, kudos for your work over the past couple of years on the Course Evaluation Response Rate Task Force. Due to your usual thorough, measured, thoughtful leadership, this initiative finally came to fruition. Well done! " [Cynthia Johnson]

• "A big thank you to Adam Maier, who kept everything moving seamlessly in clinical assessment over the past few weeks. He deserves a UME superhero cape! We often sing your praises to each other, but maybe not often enough to you, Adam "  [Cynthia Johnson]

• "A big Shout Out and thanks to Jessie Barrett Amodeo, our intrepid finance guru, for helping to keep our team on track and on budget - especially since almost all of our big items fall right at fiscal year-end. It's such a bear to get everything in before the close, and your attention to detail and watchfulness are indispensable to our success!" [Cynthia Johnson]

• "Thanks to Anita Thielman and Tammy Price for their responsiveness on the many year-end items we had to wrap up, not least of which was our MedHub contract. Your guidance is always so appreciated!" [Cynthia Johnson]

• "Thank you Addy Irvine for leading the search for our new Academic Advisor. Your leadership has resulted in a fantastic new addition to the team and our students are going to benefit greatly " [Scott D]

• "Thank you, Hannah Carter and Rachel Rudeen for organizing GME Orientation 2022. Your expertise in event planning pulled off a wonderful event for the incoming trainees." [Christy Illig] 

• Kudos to the Curriculum team for putting on a great CART workshop in June! It was engaging and wonderful to see staff and faculty in person for the day.  [Ali Niesen]

• A huge kudos and thank you to the RPAP/MetroPAP team! We successfully completed our program year and the whole team worked incredibly hard to plan for the program's End of Year events. Shout out to Laurel for helping shepherd our current class through to the end of the program and keeping on top of all of the evaluation changes and requirements, and shout out to Madeline for planning our first in-person poster session since 2019 and juggling the many details to run hybrid events! The rest of the work never pauses during busy times, and the team has done an amazing job not only seeing the class of 2022 through, but also preparing for our incoming class, summer initiatives, and organizing an office move (RPAP is finally coming to the B corridor!).  [Liz Sopdie]

• Kudos to Hannah Carter for jumping right into the events world and absolutely crushing it. I feel lucky to have you as my teammate on event days and to bounce ideas and solutions off you in the planning process. I love the creative energy you're bringing to Orientation and I'm excited to see it play out in August!  [Rachel Rudeen]

• Thank you to the entire Student Affairs team for welcoming me so warmly and making my first few months here so easy and comfortable! It's been such a blessing to have such a supportive team around me while I've been going through major upheavals in many parts of my life.  [Hannah Carter]

• A HUGE thank you to the entire Instructional Design team (Elizabeth, Megan, Aakanksha, Woojeong, and Denae) for developing and delivering an excellent curriculum retreat for our CART faculty build teams! Their hard work resulted in an incredibly successful and useful day. :)  [Jess Blum]

• Kudos to Caroline Hilk for jumping right into the  OME Director fire and quickly providing support to your direct reports.  I know it wasn't easy with everything else on your overloaded plate, but it has been such a relief and comfort to me to know that I have a manager again who has my back.  Mark was right (as he always is), it really was OK for me to be lonely for awhile because now I am definitely not sad!!"  [Marianne W]

• A huge thank you to my Admin team (Cynthia, Monica, Hailey, Nou Ka) for supporting me and covering for me while I was visiting my grandpa in Seattle in May.   I know there was a lot going on, but it was great knowing that everyone was in good administrative hands.  I was grateful that I did not have to worry while I was away. [Marianne W]