Message from the Chair (continued)

….presenting at national meetings and contributing to our profession’s body of evidence based practice. I had the pleasure of attending the Sports Section’s awards ceremony at CSM in New Orleans this past February and saw our Tara Manal and Laura Schmitt each receive major awards. Congratulations!

Speaking of awards, I am very happy to note that three people from our department will be receiving awards at the APTA Annual Meeting in Boston this June. Dr. Cole Galloway will receive the Margaret L. Moore Award for the outstanding new PT faculty member in the nation. Erin Rieben will receive the Mary McMillan Award and Jumaah Johnson (both DPT class of 2004) will receive the APTA’s Minority Scholarship Achievement Award. The department will host a reception in Boston to celebrate their achievement. The reception will be held in my suite from 7-9 p.m. at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, 110 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA  02116.

We have also added additional support staff to our office and professional research staff to our department’s research program. Most of this is due to the continued increase in our grant funding. When I took over the chair’s position, about seven years ago, the department was bringing in just over $300,000 in research grant support each year. We believe that this total represented one of the highest levels of research support among PT programs in the country. I must admit that I was very pleased when we calculated this year’s total research funding and found out that we are now bringing in slightly over $3.0 million dollars a year in direct funding and overhead support. The faculty’s hard work is paying off in both successful grant funding and other forms of recognition.

In February we were notified that the University was awarding the Department its third (and largest) UNIDEL grant. This $350,000 grant will be used to renovate previous storeroom space in the basement of McKinly Laboratory that is adjacent to our Orthopedic and Sports Clinic. This space will be used to house our growing NOA clinic and an additional motion analysis laboratory. Dr. Irene Davis has recently been awarded a $240,000 equipment grant from the Army to purchase a split belt treadmill that will be installed in this new space.

In addition, Dr. Lynn Snyder-Mackler has recently submitted a shared instrumentation grant to the NIH to purchase an additional motion analysis system. We will keep our fingers crossed and hope that this grant is funded.

As always, I would like to thank the many alumni and friends who provided financial support to the department over the past year.  In particular, I would like to acknowledge Mr. Stanley Cossoy. Mr. Cossoy is Barbara Cossoy’s brother and he contributed $50,000 to the Cossoy Scholarship fund this past year in memory of his beloved sister. This is by far the largest contribution that this department has ever received and more than doubles the value of the scholarship fund. On behalf of the faculty and students, I would like to once again thank Mr. Cossoy.

Let me conclude my message by sending everyone my warmest regards and that we would love to see you at homecoming (or any other time) this year. Best wishes for a happy and healthy year.

Sincerely,

Stuart A. Binder-Macleod, PT, PhD, FAPTA