History and Legacy

Transcript

Okay, next we’re gonna meet Mohit, a fourth year optometry student who’ll be graduating soon. Mohit is gonna tell us about the legacy of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia and the profession at large and the visionary role PCO Salus has played for more than a century. Take it away Mohit.

– Thanks Alex. The address is 1809 Spring Garden street, this is the address where Pennsylvania State College of Optometry was first founded in 1919. Through the leadership of Dr. Albert Fitch, PSCO became not only the first independent non-profit college of optometry, but also the first college to confer a doctor optometry degree. And the first college of optometry to establish itself as a university. As time has flown by, just in 2019, we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Pennsylvania College of Optometry. As we celebrate the achievements, we also look back at the groundbreaking history that we made, the first college of optometry to develop an off-campus externship program, the first to establish graduate programs in the fields of blindness and visual impairment, the first to launch an international program to advance optometry worldwide, and the first college of optometry to expand beyond a scope to include speech, language and pathology, audiology occupational therapy, blindness, and low vision studies and a physician assistant studies. Within four years here at Salus university, students will have the ability to practice their optometric skills at the recently renovated CS lab, while practicing and developing into clinicians at The Eye Institute. While giving back to the greater Philadelphia community through philanthropic events, such as Looking Out For Kids charity, Special Olympics and more, strides have been made to impact societies around us including internationally. As a fourth year South Asian student and the son of a high school math teacher, one of my main goals was to leave the school a better place than the way I found it. From becoming a student president of my class, I hope I was able to enhance the student life experience on campus while serving as an example of what a good leader should be, being engaged, respectful and a professional leader to the administration, while listening to a student’s needs and advocating for them. Meanwhile, I participated in various charity events myself to not only provide health stability to the community but also improve quality of life. Tomorrow’s healthcare will never be the same. With changes in medicine, technology, intelligence, in patient’s needs and expectations, pioneers and visionary leaders like Dr. Albert Fitch are needed to create the next school, to have the next breakthrough, to break barriers. I’ll leave you with this. Have you thought about your legacy? Have you thought about creating it here at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry and Salus University? Well, we welcome you with open arms. What do you have for us next, Alex?

– Outstanding job, Mohit. What a great story about the rich and groundbreaking history of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University, it’s other programs and the pioneers and visionary leaders who have paved the way for more than a hundred years. Absolutely amazing. Cheers Mohit.