The Year That Was: Celebrating Our Achievements in 2012 Part 1

“New Year’s Eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.”

— Hamilton Wright Mabie

“Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.”

— Bill Vaughn

So there I was, with my 21-year old son Andrew on New Year’s Eve, at the Sugar Bowl party, which he aptly described as an “interesting sociological experience.” Circumstances created this opportunity, and I knew that the chances of sharing another New Year’s Eve alone with him in the future would be quite small. Leaving aside what was to occur two days later at the game itself, it was a wonderful experience. And while I didn’t make it to midnight, my thoughts were indeed qualitatively different than on other nights. You also may not have had “quite the same thoughts” on New Year’s Eve as on other nights. No doubt, you took some time to reflect on the year that has just passed and to think about your personal resolutions and professional goals for the year ahead.

The same is true for UF&Shands. Here is a celebration of our achievements in 2012 (part 1), as recounted by our HSC college deans. Part 2 will focus on the HSC centers and institutes, as well as our hospitals.

College of Dentistry

Dean: Theresa Dolan, D.D.S., M.P.H.

Research: The College of Dentistry’s research enterprise continues to expand interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts through programs like the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network, a national research network of dentists and hygienists. UF is one of seven institutions awarded a portion of a $67 million, seven-year grant from the NIDCR that brings together three regional networks, creating a national network that allows dentists practicing in rural areas to participate in research projects. In collaboration with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), the college is expanding its Dental Clinical Research Unit, the Sensory Testing Unit, as well as support for clinical investigators. The college is also taking the lead on the UF Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence (PRICE), which will support the integration of pain treatment and research under one center with the goal of expanding research and improving the delivery of comprehensive pain medicine care to patients. Our research program is ranked 10th among all dental institutions in the United States for NIH research funding through the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and our goal is to regain our “top 5” status with the recruitment of new faculty to the college.

Education: The college continues to be recognized as one of the top dental educational programs in the country. We received more than 1,500 applications for 83 available positions, enabling us to select the best and brightest students for the D.M.D. program. For the fourth year in a row, our D.M.D. students achieved a 100 percent first-time pass rate on the National Dental Board Examination, Part 1. The college has committed to a significant curriculum revision, and received a five-year $2.5 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to fund faculty development activities supporting “Dental Institution Curriculum for the 21st Century.” A four-year $3 million grant was received from HRSA to provide scholarships for dental students. The award will help the college recruit and retain qualified students from disadvantaged backgrounds, with the goals of improving access to health professions education and fostering a diversified health workforce for Florida.

Patient care: The college provides high-quality dental care in UF-owned and partnership dental centers located throughout Florida. This past year, significant renovations of the first floor lobby and several clinical centers were completed. The college is welcoming new patients at its Faculty Practice Center as well as the dental specialty centers, and is equipped to provide the full spectrum of dental care for the entire family. (For an appointment, please call 352-273-7945 or visit our website for more information.) Dental students provide dental care in our Gainesville community as well as in community-based clinics throughout Florida that primarily treat underserved patients, including at-risk children, migrant workers and the homeless. Increasing access to care for Florida’s underserved is a cornerstone goal for the college, especially during these troubled economic times. To that end, the college created an Oral Health Plan in conjunction with an Alachua County Coalition that collected unprecedented oral health surveillance data on all third-graders in the county, applied preventive dental sealants and referred children with major oral health issues for care to local dental centers. The program was so successful it was mirrored in Collier County this year with the help of the college’s NCEF Pediatric Dental Center in Naples, and we just received several grants to replicate the program in Miami-Dade County in collaboration with the University of Miami. The college also received a HRSA grant to support postdoctoral public health education for residents enrolled in our pediatric dentistry programs in Gainesville and Naples.

College of Medicine

Dean: Michael L. Good, M.D.

The faculty, students and staff of the College of Medicine continued to make significant advances in all missions in 2012. Clinical Growth was very strong in both the outpatient and inpatient settings. The number of outpatient visits in fiscal year 2012 was nearly 40% higher than in fiscal year 2004. Over the same period of time, the average number of patients admitted to Shands at UF has increased by over 50%. Increases in Emergency Department visits and in surgical cases parallel this growth. During 2012, we opened the new primary care facilities on Main Street and in Jonesville, and the new multispecialty outpatient facility at Springhill on Northwest 39th Avenue. In addition, free parking was instituted for patients and families at all hospital and clinical practice sites.

Patient Quality and Safety measures show sustained achievement of the observed-to-expected mortality rates for inpatients. Scores in safety, patient centeredness and efficiency continue to improve. The “ampersand” is nowhere more evident than in the partnership between COM faculty and hospital staff to advance patient care quality. Recently, the Leapfrog Group awarded Shands at UF an A grade for patient safety, and Shands at UF was one of only 12 hospitals nationwide to receive an award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Critical Care Societies Collaborative recognizing that the hospital had no central line infections for the past three years. Shands at UF also received an award from HHS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology for patient safety. UF&Shands placed second in the nation for our ability to report patient safety events as a means to reduce medical errors.

In Research, faculty members have made impressive contributions. Dr. Maureen Goodenow was named a Jefferson Science Fellow; Drs. Laura Ranum and Maurice Swanson received the W. M. Keck Foundation Award; and Dr. George Drusano was named the winner of the Maxwell Finland Award for Scientific Achievement. The estimated total funding from the National Institutes of Health to the college is just over $84 million for federal fiscal year 2012, representing a $12 million (16.3%) increase from 2011 and moving the college within the top 50 medical schools in NIH funding. In addition, 74 faculty members are members of NIH study sections and six are members of NIH councils.

The Educational status of the college is quite strong. Applications have increased by 14% over the previous year, with more than 3,400 applications received for our 135 positions in the first-year medical student class. Dr. Jay Lynch has established new admissions processes while increasing the diversity of the entering students. A new medical school curriculum is being implemented, one that is patient-centered and incorporates more active collaborative learning. COM students continue to score well above national means on the USMLE licensing exams. Of the class graduating in 2012, 17% were selected into residencies at top 10 medical schools and 40% at top 25 medical schools. The Physician Assistant program has received five years of reaccreditation and 100% of the members of the class of 2012 passed their board exam. The doctoral and masters’ graduate programs continue to thrive, and a recent university review commended them for strong mentoring and an excellent graduation rate, and for limiting the average time to graduation to less than six years. Several new online graduate courses and certificate programs have been developed. Eight ACGME-accredited residency and fellowship programs received site visits this past year, with two receiving continued accreditation, two new programs in Plastic Surgery and Child Neurology receiving accreditation and four pending decisions. The college established the H. James Free Center for Primary Education and Innovation, and appointed Dr. Robert Hatch as its founding director. Planning and fundraising for the new Medical Education Building continues.

COM Faculty now have more professional development opportunities, with monthly seminars and internal and external leadership training programs. Tenure and Promotion Guidelines have been revised and will now be reviewed on a regular basis. Departments have received the results of the 2011 Faculty Forward Survey, which has helped focus priorities for the college to improve communication and responsiveness, improve faculty alignment between mission and effort, encourage faculty participation in decisions, improve our practice settings and operations, support growth opportunities, facilitate promotion and enhance our workplace culture.

The Finances of the college were significantly impacted by a very large reduction in state funding. Contributions from Shands through the AQSA funds increased, in accordance with performance metrics that comprised a new AQSA agreement last year. Each Department has carefully adjusted its budget to identify cost savings and additional income sources. With strong clinical and research revenues to date, the college is well-positioned to continue to support the important work of its faculty and programs.

College of Medicine-Jacksonville

Dean: Daniel R. Wilson, M.D., Ph.D.

Transitions: 2012 was a year of major change at the College of Medicine-Jacksonville. Robert Nuss, M.D., retired as dean after an extraordinary 40-year career. His successor, Daniel R. Wilson, M.D., began in January just as strong headwinds of state Medicaid rate cuts hit Jacksonville especially harshly. This ushered in many clinical changes throughout the year that are ongoing. As the calendar year itself, Jim Burkhart (hospital CEO and senior associate dean for medical center affairs) accepted a new position and we were fortunate Russ Armistead accepted the challenge and is already at the helm in close collaboration with Dean Wilson and the faculty. Clinical Service: With the financial pressures that emerged in the early part of the year, the new dean and I convened clinical leaders in a retreat to map strategies to transform the UF&Shands Jacksonville. The goal is to move this academic health center to firmer financial ground. In the case of the North Jacksonville project, we will be moving to what is truly ‘new ground’ near the airport. Phase One of the north campus plan is rapidly moving forward with an ER, Surgery Center and Office Building to open in the summer of 2014. In addition to this new facilities project, faculty and staff also embraced a strategy to bring customer service up to the exceptional levels already achieved in safety and efficiency. Furthermore, a wide range of business opportunities and partnerships have been identified. So too, we are exploring several potential alignments and reconfigurations that may crystallize amid massive change in health systems. Likewise, there was a thorough review and ongoing re-engineering of all internal operations. These efforts are paying off as faculty practice volumes have increased 5%, and clinical services have grown more than 40% from 2004-2012, while an otherwise unsustainable level of charity care is beginning to be better distributed among Jacksonville hospitals. U.S. News & World Report ranked the health center No. 2 among 17 hospitals in Jacksonville and 11th statewide, as well as identifying it as having the most highly rated adult medical specialties. It was also named a “Rising Star” by the University Hospital Consortium, having jumped to “Four Stars” as a top 20 teaching hospital in America. Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery became an independent department after a perfect accreditation visit. The Stroke Program was reaccredited with a perfect score, and certifications were earned by the Centers for Chest Pain and Breast Health. The Neuroscience Institute is growing rapidly, the Cardiovascular Center opened a Valve Program, and the Proton Therapy Institute added a VERO unit (only the second in the United States). The fiscally misunderstood City Contract was restructured as a consolidated medical home. UF-Jacksonville became the first academic health center in Florida to have all of its more than 20 primary care clinics to earn Level 3 Medical Home designation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the highest possible ranking. Faculty achievements are too many to elaborate on here, but one highlight was that 12 UF practitioners were honored as Jacksonville “Health Care Heroes,” including Dr. Tom Chui, who was accorded a “Lifetime Achievement Award” upon his retirement after many years of stewardship in pediatrics.

Research: Funded research grew by 34% to nearly $27 million. Not only is this portfolio larger than many full four-year medical schools, it also is 70% federally funded and mostly consists of investigator-initiated clinical trials, applied clinical-care research, and population and outcomes science, as well as translational studies. The limited degree of and infrastructure for basic science must grow and the new dean works diligently with regional leaders who share this aim. The Center for Health Equity and Quality Research (CHEQR) is an important platform for the university to conduct health services research on disparities of health status and health care among urban and underserved populations. Other strengths include the growing importance as an urban venue for the UF CTSI, the UF Center for HIV/AIDS Research, Education and Service (UF CARES), the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network, the Cardiology Research Center and advanced programs in both Health Safety and Human Factors Biomedical Engineering. Education: Jacksonville continues to serve as a terrific complement to Gainesville in medical student education as all UF students spend considerable time on our urban campus. It is also the third-largest site for graduate medical education in the state of Florida (behind University of Miami and UF-Gainesville), with 334 residents and fellows spanning 34 programs, including new residencies in anesthesiology and psychiatry approved this past year. The Simulation Center continues to thrive, and the UF COM Jacksonville team of residents was crowned the National Champions in the resident “Clinical Simulation Wars.” This is a remarkable education effort for a campus for which state funding is less than 2% of revenue. Forward Together: There is much actual and even more potential energy accumulating in Jacksonville — energy that is being actualized!

College of Nursing

Dean: Kathleen Ann Long, R.N., Ph.D.

Education: The college continues its tradition of excellence in education as the flagship nursing college in the state and one of the top programs nationally. In 2012, after a self-evaluation process by faculty, staff, students and alumni, and a rigorous external review, the college’s baccalaureate and master’s degree programs earned 10-year reaccreditation, and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program attained its initial five-year accreditation from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). Accreditation by the CCNE ensures the quality and integrity of the College of Nursing’s programs and is based on national standards for education excellence.

The most recent graduating classes of the College of Nursing’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.) program averaged a 99 percent pass rate on the national licensing examination, again far surpassing state and national averages. These are the first graduates of the college’s new B.S.N. curriculum, which emphasizes the IOM recommendations, including interprofessional teamwork. The 2011 advanced practice nursing graduates also attained high pass rates on their national specialty certification examinations — on average, over a 90 percent pass rate. Those taking the acute care nurse practitioner, neonatal nurse practitioner and pediatric nurse practitioner exams all achieved 100 percent pass rates.

Research: Assistant Professor Jeanne-Marie Stacciarini, Ph.D., R.N., was part of an interdisciplinary research team that received a $400,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Along with colleagues from the Center for Latin American Studies, they will develop an interdisciplinary program on immigration, religion and social change. Stacciarini also anticipates receipt of an NIH Mentored Research Scientist Development Award, which received a perfect score from NIH reviewers in October. This award, expected to total $354,816, will support her three-year study titled “Health Inequalities: Social Isolation among Rural Latinos.” Associate Professor Ann Horgas, Ph.D., R.N., is part of a team of UF investigators receiving $2.3 million from NIH for research on early detection and prevention of mild cognitive impairment. Horgas, a geriatric nursing expert, serves as a co-principal investigator. Associate Professor Barbara Lutz, Ph.D., R.N., continues with her research funded by a $437,959 NIH R15 grant, which focuses on the needs of stroke survivors and their family caregivers as they transition home after inpatient rehabilitation.

Three doctoral students received nursing research grants from the American Nurses Foundation, the charitable and philanthropic arm of the American Nurses Association. Brantlee Broome-Stone, M.S.N., R.N., Amanda Brown, M.S.N., C.N.L., and Kerry Creasy, M.S.N., A.R.N.P., were each awarded grants to help fund their doctoral research.

Patient Care: Archer Family Health Care, the UF College of Nursing’s comprehensive, nurse-managed health center, remains a nationally recognized model, partnering with a local rural community to expand access to high-quality care for the underserved. The center provides approximately 6,000 patient visits per year — most of which are with underserved or uninsured patients. This year Archer Family Health Care added a case manager to enhance continuity of care for patients with multiple chronic illnesses and initiated prenatal care in collaboration with the UF College of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s nurse midwives.

Building upon a 10-year working relationship, the College of Nursing was one of four schools in the nation chosen by MammaCare to use MammaCare technology to teach breast self-examination and clinical breast examination in its curricula. The National Science Foundation has provided funds to evaluate the use of MammaCare Clinical Breast Examination Simulators and online clinical breast examination training in undergraduate and graduate nursing program education.

Fundraising: In the fall, the College of Nursing received a $3 million gift from an alumna to fund education and research focused on quality of life for patients and their families dealing with mild to moderate traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders and related conditions. The estate commitment is the single largest gift in the college’s history and was given by Brenda Barton-Wheaton and her husband Richard Wheaton, also a UF alumnus. In addition, Professor Emeritus Jodi Irving, M.S.N., A.R.N.P., and Associate Professor and Department Chair Jo Snider, Ed.D., R.N., made a $500,000 estate gift to the college to establish the Dorothy M. Smith Endowed Scholarship/Fellowship.

These gifts contributed to the more than $16 million raised by the college during UF’s capital campaign, supporting the college’s education, research and practice missions.

College of Pharmacy

Dean: William H. Riffee, Ph.D.

Outreach: The UF Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona, officially opened Nov. 30, brings pharmacy research, education and service to the heart of Orlando’s Medical City. The UF College of Pharmacy’s Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology, housed at the new facility, is among the first academic centers in the nation to adopt sophisticated mathematical modeling and computer simulations to mimic clinical trials of new drugs. The resources and research efforts can be better targeted toward drugs that have the potential to help millions of people, and the drugs that emerge from the process will be more likely to receive quick approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The college also will expand its graduate, postdoctoral and professional Pharm.D. educational programs with added access to research opportunities available at the UF Lake Nona campus and with its Medical City partners. Medication Therapy Management Communication and Care Center at Lake Nona is staffed by faculty, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Through the telehealth call center, student pharmacists gain experiential training in comprehensive medication reviews for Medicare patients and their health care providers.

Research: Personalized medicine has become a reality for heart patients at the UF Academic Health Center and Shands hospital through a research team led by Julie Johnson, Pharm.D., director of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Personalized Medicine Program and the UF College of Pharmacy’s Center for Pharmacogenomics. UF doctors will help ward off heart attacks or strokes after heart procedures by taking a person’s genetic information into account before prescribing medications that prevent blood clots. Patients at Shands at UF medical center who undergo a heart catheter procedure will now be routinely screened for biological signals that show how they might respond to a common anticlotting drug called clopidogrel, also sold as Plavix. This initial use of personalized medicine at will help the roughly 1,500 patients per year treated at the cardiac catheterization lab, 40 percent of whom are likely to be prescribed clopidogrel. The program has received nearly $850,000 through the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and its Pharmacogenomics Research Network.

Almut Winterstein, Ph.D., a professor in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy in the UF College of Pharmacy, contributed research to a decade-long clinical and policy debate of treatment risks for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Her findings, published in the British Medical Journal in August, showed that children taking central nervous system stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin do not face an increased risk of serious heart conditions during treatment. The study, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, examines a large U.S. population of 1.2 million youths eligible for Medicaid programs in 28 states.

Two research faculty have been awarded endowed chairs — Richard Segal, Ph.D., a professor, has been awarded the Dr. Robert and Barbara Crisafi endowed chair in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, and Hendrik Luesch, Ph.D., an associate professor of medicinal chemistry, has been awarded the Frank A. Duckworth eminent scholar chair in drug research and development.

Four researchers at the University of Florida were chosen as charter fellows of the National Academy of Inventors. From the College of Pharmacy, Raymond J. Bergeron, Ph.D., a distinguished professor emeritus of medicinal chemistry, was named. A Frank A. Duckworth eminent scholar chair in drug research and development for more than 10 years at the UF College of Pharmacy, Bergeron joins 98 innovators who represent 54 research universities and nonprofit research institutes. Bergeron holds more than 200 patents and has dedicated his career to drug discovery and development related to cancer and genetically linked iron overload diseases such as thalassemia and sickle cell anemia affecting children. The academic inventors and innovators were nominated for outstanding contributions to innovation in areas such as patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, significant impact on society, and support and enhancement of innovation.

Education: The UF College of Pharmacy reached two milestones in its Doctor of Pharmacy professional degree programs. The entry-level Pharm.D. program marked the 10th anniversary of its three distance campuses in Florida, while the Working Professional Pharm.D. (WPPD) program announced its 2,000th graduate. In 2002, the college established campuses in Jacksonville, Orlando and St. Petersburg, allowing more Florida students an opportunity to earn a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. Through distance learning technologies, these campuses share the same curriculum as the Gainesville campus. Each May, more than 300 student pharmacists from the four campuses come together as one student body for UF commencement exercises in Gainesville. Established nearly 20 years ago, the WPPD program allows licensed pharmacists living and working anywhere in North America to earn the UF Doctor of Pharmacy degree. Canadian Pharmacist Robert Ford, the 2,000th graduate, earned his bachelor of pharmacy in 1975 from the University of Alberta, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Upon admission to the UF WPPD program in 2009, Ford studied through online coursework, participated in class discussion boards and met during weekend seminars with his Las Vegas cohort.

College of Public Health and Health Professions

Dean: Michael G. Perri, Ph.D.

Teaching: The past year witnessed the first graduates from the college’s Ph.D. programs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the launching of the Public Health Ph.D. program with concentrations in environmental and global health and in social and behavioral science, and the addition of a public health track in the Bachelor of Health Science program. The college also received approval to launch a variety of new academic endeavors, including a self-funded option in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program; a Master of Health Science degree in Environmental Health with a “One Health” concentration; a Bachelor of Health Science option through UF’s Innovation Academy, and new certificate programs in Forensic Vocational Rehabilitation, Psychometry, and One Health.

Research: Over the past year, extramural awards for research and training rose by 13%, from $19 million to $21.5 million. Moreover, PHHP grew its portfolio of NIH-funded research by 43%, from $8.1 million to $11.6 million, and achieved a ranking of 19th in NIH funding among the 50 accredited schools of public health. In addition to garnering external support for more than 200 research studies, the college attracted several federally funded training grants, including the Rural South Public Health Training Center, the Fogarty International Center Indo-US Training Program on Chronic Non-Communicable Disorders, and the Rehabilitation Research Career Development Program.

Service: PHHP expanded its clinical and community service activities, both locally and abroad. The “HealthStreet” initiative (supported jointly with COM and the CTSI) established contacts with more than 1,000 residents (80% of whom were of minority group status), and enrolled more than 100 people in research studies and clinical trials at UF. The College continued its leadership role in the "Better Tomorrow for Haiti" Initiative — an array of service plus teaching and research activities, jointly sponsored with the Emerging Pathogens Institute, the UF International Center and multiple UF colleges. Working in collaboration with the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population and with several NGOs, the Haiti Initiative facilitated the rebuilding of two local schools, established four school-based family clinics, expanded NIH- and DoD-funded research on cholera and malaria, and provided MPH students with opportunities to complete field work on key public health problems facing people of developing countries.

College of Veterinary Medicine

Dean: Glen F. Hoffsis, D.V.M, M.S., D.A.C.V.I.M.

Administration: Major changes have occurred within the college’s administration. These include the hiring of Dr. Pamela Ginn as associate dean for students and instruction; Dr. Ammon Peck as associate dean for research and graduate studies; and Dr. Carlos Risco as chair of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. Earlier this year, Dean Glen Hoffsis announced that he would retire on July 1, 2013 after serving nearly seven years as dean. The search for a new dean should be completed early in 2013.

Research: The College of Veterinary Medicine has continued in its development of immunology, especially mucosal immunology, as an area of research excellence. Dr. David Pascual joined Mansour Mohamadzadeh and Cuong Nguyen in renovated research space, now housing state-of-the-art flow cytometry equipment along with confocal microscopy and microengraving technologies. Research funding increased 12 percent this past year from 2011. The breadth of research discoveries published by college faculty this year is demonstrated by the discovery of a mutant gut bacteria that can reverse colon cancer in mice (Dr. Mansour Mohamadzadeh et al), a unique new "Sunshine" virus linked to the death of Australian snakes (Dr. James Wellehan et al), and Leishmania siamensis infection in a Florida horse, the first documentation of this zoonotic agent in the United States (Dr. Sarah Reuss et al). Dr. Paul Davenport was promoted to the rank of distinguished professor. His latest research endeavor involves developing exercise performance measures for evaluating robotic load assist devices that help soldiers carrying packs weighing over 100 pounds. The project, a one-year contract with a multinational defense contractor based in the U.K., includes six investigators from three UF colleges.

Education: The college increased it veterinary student enrollment from 100 to 112 per class this fall. To help facilitate this increased class size, we renovated a lecture hall, our basic sciences teaching laboratory, our surgery teaching laboratory, our shelter medicine teaching facility and our Education Center, including its associated computer laboratory. The Education Center represents our college’s commitment to providing our students with an exceptional facility to support instruction, and is an acknowledgment of the growing importance in leveraging electronic resources to support our curriculum. In addition, the gross anatomy laboratory was enhanced with the addition of new high-resolution AV equipment and one of our largest conference rooms was repurposed to create a clinical technics simulation laboratory. Shelter Medicine began new distance education graduate certificate program and we taught a new undergraduate distance education course, "The Dog," for the first time. This three-credit course was designed specifically for students planning careers in veterinary medicine and veterinary technicians programs. In addition, UF veterinary students now have the opportunity to earn a certificate in Veterinary Business Management.

Patient Care: The college opened a new UF Pet Emergency Treatment Services (PETS) after-hours emergency veterinary clinic this summer in Ocala. As a result, Marion County and surrounding areas now have access to much-needed evening and weekend emergency pet care. To support this new initiative, the college has expanded its Emergency and Critical Care Service to include five board-certified criticalists, along with new interns and residents. The Oncology Service has expanded with the hiring of our first board-certified radiation oncologist, Lyndsay Kubicek, who complements the expertise of existing medical and surgical oncologists. The integrative medicine service added a new faculty member, Justin Shmalberg, and opened a new rehabilitation and fitness center that now includes nutrition consultations and a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, in addition to physical therapy and acupuncture. These new initiative have helped the UF Veterinary Hospitals increase their caseload by 17% over last year.

Development: The Florida Tomorrow Campaign concluded with the college raising more than $53 million, exceeding the original $40 million goal. The college also started named scholarship funds in honor of Drs. Colin Burrows, Michael Schaer and Charles Courtney upon their retirement. The Dean’s Circle of Excellence giving club now has 49 members, who gave more than $850,000 to the college.

Forward Together,

David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Vice President, Health Affairs President, UF&Shands Health System