With a goal of bringing to life its recently updated mission, vision, and values, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine is launching a campaign featuring faculty, staff, and students.
The updated mission, vision, and values went into effect July 1 as part of the OUWB 2022-25 Strategic Plan. Eighteen months of work went into updating the plan that reflects input from all OUWB stakeholders.
It provides a blueprint for how to achieve identified goals specific to education, diversity, equity, and inclusion, community engagement, research, and stewardship. (More details and a link to the plan can be found here.)
With the new campaign, school officials want to make sure the contents of the plan are more than words, says Erin Shirey, MPA, senior planning analyst. The focus of this particular campaign is to bring the OUWB values to life.
Shirey says the campaign features community members who model and support OUWB’s values, such as professionalism, excellence, collaboration, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“It was hard to narrow it down given our dedicated and amazing OUWB community, however there is no doubt that these individuals exemplify our values,” she says.
The participants are:
- Gustavo Patino, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Foundational Medical Studies and Department of Neurology
- Kara Sawarynski, Ph.D., vice chair and associate professor, Department of Foundational Medical Studies
- Dan Schlegel, anatomy lab manager
- Amy Smark, M.D., assistant dean for medical education, M4, assistant professor of Emergency Medicine, OUWB, and emergency medicine physician at Beaumont
- Anthony Stallion, M.D., professor of Surgery and Pediatrics OUWB, and chief of Pediatric Surgery at Beaumont Children’s
- Rima Stepanian, M2
- Katy Torma, administrative coordinator in Student Affairs
Campaign participants say they were happy to be part of the school’s messaging, which will appear on OUWB’s social channels, on-campus TVs, and more.
The ad featuring Sawarynski centers on professionalism.
| Sawarynski |
“I was honored to be asked to participate in this new campaign,” says Sawarynski, who has been with OUWB since 2011.
“Our mission, vision and values have always been a driving force of the culture of OUWB,” she adds. “I am excited to see our story, and our values, be shared with a larger audience.”
The ad with Patino touts OUWB’s commitment to collaboration.
Patino says he was willing to be part of the campaign because he agrees with “the school's philosophy that we are all responsible for the learning environment and that such an environment can only reach its full potential when our individual values align with those of the school.”
“It is important to be part of this campaign to highlight both that alignment and the commitment of all of us to create the best learning environment possible for our peers and trainees,” says Patino.
The ad featuring Stepanian highlights OUWB’s diversity.
“I felt that it was important to be part of this campaign to showcase the diversity of the student body of the medical students here at OUWB and of the community in the greater metro-Detroit area at large,” she says.
Stepanian says she hopes “that people take away that medicine is actively making big steps moving forward to grow and change in order to better serve the unique needs of patients and communities that extend beyond just medical care.”
“There is so much data out there that patients have better outcomes when their doctors try to understand and relate to them,” she says. “OUWB is preparing us with the tools to go out into whatever communities we end up serving and show patients that we respect them as a whole person, not just medical diagnoses in the electronic records.”
Shirey says she is thankful for everyone’s participation.
“I hope that others can see themselves in these values and know that they are more than just words at OUWB,” she says.
“The values are how we should be interacting with each other, what we want to instill in our students and OUWB trained physicians,” adds Shirey.
For more information, contact Andrew Dietderich, marketing writer, OUWB, at [email protected].
To request an interview, visit the OUWB Communications & Marketing webpage.
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