Fall Commencement 2018

The week leading up to Commencement is always a busy one full of events before graduates head out into the world with their new professional degrees in hand. But, on Thursday, October 11, family and friends gathered and watched proudly as graduates were presented with their hard-earned professional degrees at the University’s Fall Commencement at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ Perelman Theater in Philadelphia.

At the 115th commencement, the University bestowed doctoral and master’s degrees in the professions of Physician Assistant Studies, Audiology, Blindness and Low Vision Studies, Biomedicine, Occupational Therapy, Public Health and Clinical Optometry with an International Advanced Studies certificate. 

President Michael H. Mittelman welcomed guests and proceeded to speak about transitioning from student to professional and encouraged all the graduates to create a better healthcare system with what they have learned at Salus.

Graduate Commencement address speaker, Andrea Carr Tsyzka, MS, OTR/L, SIPT, associate professor in the University’s Occupational Therapy Program, gave five simple rules to her fellow graduates to follow to be successful: 1) Stay current 2) Be humble 3) Be ethical 4) Be flexible 5) Be bucket fillers. She continued to elaborate on being a bucket filler – an idea she borrowed from a children’s book that uses the analogy comparing mental and emotional health to an invisible bucket of water where negative people or stressful situations can dip into it and empty the bucket but positive people and situations can fill it instead. Reflecting on the bucket fillers that helped students get to graduation today, Tsyzka said “It’s our turn to pay kindness forward, set a goal each day in your careers, or in your life for that matter, to fill someone else’s bucket.”

Dr. Janice Sharre, FAAO, immediate past provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, served as keynote speaker for the afternoon ceremony. Dr. Scharre spoke passionately to the graduates about taking time to reflect on what they have accomplished. In her speech, she focused on transitions and emphasized that while they may have had other big transitions in life, the graduation marks one of the most significant. She advised the graduates with her final words of wisdom, three characteristics she believes provide points of stability and consistency during a transition period that help shape who is a person is: integrity, resilience, and compassion. “Life will provide you with opportunities and challenges – some you can imagine and others unimaginable,” she said.

During the ceremony, Dr. Scharre was also presented with an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree. She joined a short list of just 58 other distinguished recipients to be awarded this degree by the University since 1963, when the then Pennsylvania State College of Optometry was initially  approved by the Department of Education and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In 2014, Dr. Scharre joined Salus as the provost and vice president of Academic Affairs. Her firm belief in a collaborative education model has played a big role in the University’s inter­professional curriculum, creating a path for students across all programs to learn to work with each other professionally, therefore providing collaborative care for students and faculty alike.

Prior to her most recent role, Dr. Scharre served as a consultant for Salus and was instrumen­tal in the development of the University’s Pennsylvania College of Op­tometry Accelerated Scholars Program. It was the first accelerated Doc­tor of Optometry degree program in the country and is highly selective, offering enrolled students the opportunity to earn the credit equiva­lency of students in a traditional four-year program in just three years.