Good news

Charles Manning’s R01, with Dan Ayers as co-investigator, was funded under the ARRA. This R01 will investigate the biological basis of imaging biomarkers in colorectal cancer.

Frank reported that the CTSA supplement also was funded, to support interim monitoring of VICTR-CTSA-funded studies.

People

Kimberly Crimin’s appointment is close to final.

JSM had a record attendance of 6,500, including at least six department members actively involved in recruiting during the meetings. Frank expressed particular appreciation for Dan Byrne’s work at the meeting; Dan spoke to more than 35 potential job candidates. At this point, the department has invited two candidates for formal interviews.

Service

Peggy Schuyler will be chair for this year’s Community Giving Campaign.

The American Heart Walk is coming up. If you are interesting in captaining the biostatistics team, please contact Linda.

Quality

The staff and faculty satisfaction survey, formerly called the community survey, is set for September 8th to 25th. A new vendor, HR Solutions, has been selected, and the survey will have only 55 questions, fewer than in previous years.

Everyone in the department should participate in a CQI project. CQI meetings are held the first Thursday of each month at 9:00 AM. Please bring your ideas for new CQI projects.

For results of the department’s telecommunications survey, please visit http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/08.11.09TelecommunicationsSurvey.pdf.

The department is working with AT&T to improve cell reception in MCN. Please see http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/ATT.pdf for an update. Thanks to Diane for coordinating the telecom survey and for working with AT&T.

Growth

Staff support for future projects will be charged to a recharge service center, rather than allocating grant money directly to staff salaries. We hope to have the new recharge center operational within a month, subject to final approval from John Manning.

The Department of Pediatrics has entered into a collaboration plan with the department. Pediatrics will support 0.4 faculty FTE and 1 staff FTE for one year.

The graduate training program has received unanimous approval from the faculty. Jeffrey Blume, graduate program director, will send the program proposal out to all department members and also post it on the Wiki. The program will award both MS and PhD degrees and includes the following key features: a focus on biostatistics, rather than statistics; a focus on one-to-one mentoring; a focus on communication, with cultivation of the ability to translate statistical language to language more accessible to non-statisticians; a balance among Bayesian, frequentist, and likelihood methods; and avoidance of any course that does not include computing. The department has set a goal of providing 17% salary support per course per year to department faculty who teach graduate courses.

With department approval, the program now will be reviewed by the dean’s office, the executive faculty committee, and the faculty senate. In all, it could take up to a year to receive final approval for the program.

Finance

In future, funds from CTSA vouchers will be transferred to discretionary spending centers, and not used for salary support, in most cases.

Best regards,
CQI Communications Team
Frank Harrell, Yu Shyr, Dan Byrne, Linda Stewart, and Lynne Berry

-- JohnBock - 01 Apr 2011
Topic revision: r2 - 26 Apr 2013, JohnBock
 

This site is powered by FoswikiCopyright © 2013-2022 by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding Vanderbilt Biostatistics Wiki? Send feedback