Alumni Association President’s Message

Dear Alumni and Friends,

After these many months of experiencing the pandemic that few of us have ever experienced, we have started to venture out in public and interact with one another face-to-face. The Salus community has remained strong through the pandemic and worked together to maintain our high level of professionalism and partnership.

I am proud and honored to introduce myself as the current president of the Alumni Association. I have been a part of the Association since July 2012, when one of my former professors suggested me because she thought I would be a good fit. I graduated from the University’s (then) College of Education and Rehabilitation (CER) as a Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments (TVI) and an Orientation and Mobility (O&M) specialist. I believe I was one of the first members from my College to be on the Alumni Board of Directors. All members before me, as well as the individuals on our current board, are there because we believe in supporting the University’s students.

I am excited to welcome the incoming class of students, as well as those returning to campus. The Alumni Association is committed to contributing to student success. We are doing more to connect with students, our future alumni, including having a presence at commencement, new student orientation, the Student Fair, speaking to individual classes and more.

We continue to foster our initiatives such as learning grants which assist with registration expenses to professional conferences or travel expenses for humanitarian trips. Even when travel was not allowed, we continued to offer grants to defray the cost of virtual conferences.

There is so much you can do to be a part of this exciting community, and we welcome all of you. Presently, Kayla Hawkins ’24OD, and Megan Kirkpatrick ’24AUD, are our student representatives. We are also looking forward to welcoming a student representative from the College of Health Sciences, Education and Rehabilitation (CHER). And, last but certainly not east, we invite you to become an alumni ambassador.

I hope we all have a great year and I look forward to working with everyone.

Warm regards,

Merle Silverbook MEd, TVI ’08, O&M Specialist ’10