Good News

Chuck is celebrating 50 years at Vanderbilt! Thanks to all who joined the celebration Friday at the University Club.

Our staff/faculty community survey completion rate was outstanding: 98.5%! Frank appreciates all of the responses. A special thanks to Pengcheng, for his reminders and encouragement about completing the survey.

AT&T is building a new cell tower, which should result in significant improvements to reception in MCN within the next year. AT&T also is offering a 17% discount to Vanderbilt employees who switch to AT&T’s service.

Grant news

One of Ayumi’s collaborators received a perfect score on a K grant application. Dan Ayers reported that Charles Manning’s RC1 grant was funded. Jonathan’s R01 funding will begin soon. One of Yuwei’s clients has received funding for a pneumonia grant.

Promotions

Elizabeth Koehler has been promoted to biostatistician III.

PEOPLE

Several important dates have been announced and added to the department calendar. The School of Medicine 2010 commencement ceremony will be held on May 14th; faculty, please mark this date and plan to attend. The 2010 spring faculty assembly will be held April 8th. JSM and ENAR dates for 2010 through 2014 also have been posted to the department calendar; please check the calendar for specifics.

Our next all-department meeting is Monday (October 12th) at 2:00 PM in MRB III, room 1220.

All Vanderbilt faculty and staff are required to have up-to-date immunizations. If you are a new faculty member, please contact Linda to ensure that you have all required immunizations.

Eve Anderson is now managing Frank’s calendar.

SERVICE

The AHA Start! Heart Walk was held September 26th. The 26th was one of the many rainy days we’ve had recently; nevertheless, department walkers raised more than $500. Next year, we hope to have sunny weather and more walkers!

The Community Giving Campaign is up and running. Frank expressed the importance of this campaign, pointing out that the campaign offers a variety of choices for your donations. The department is grateful to have Angel An as our ambassador for this important campaign.

QUALITY

The NIH is requesting a new biosketch element. As of October 1, 2009 for non-competing applications, and January 25, 2010 for competing applications, all biosketches must include a personal statement. Please see http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/Biosketches for more details. In addition, please remember that biosketches must now include a PMCID number for all publications listed. Sherry Stokes has updated the wiki with this information; we very much appreciate her excellent work.

GROWTH

Jeff and Frank met with John Manning and Susan Wente to discuss the graduate program proposal. The next step is to meet with Dean Balser. Please note that the graduate program is still looking for someone to teach spring semester regression analysis. The department will cover approximately 10% to 15% of faculty salary for each course taught.

We anticipate that three M.S. biostatisticians will be moved to the new recharge center system early next year. More details regarding recharge centers will follow.

FINANCE

The department is working on a policy to address the issue of eliminating biostatisticians from a grant once funded. This policy will require investigators to obtain department approval before removing biostatisticians from their grant.

Best regards,

CQI Communications Team

Frank Harrell, Yu Shyr, Dan Byrne, Linda Stewart, and Lynne Berry

-- JohnBock - 01 Apr 2011