On my newsletter, I put some graphics up, which you can see in the header image. These numbers need a bit of explaining, so I figured I’d do that as a blog, but while I am at it, I think it is good to elaborate on my personal view on measuring success and goal achieving. You can find the link to those thoughts at the bottom for the blog, “Measuring Success.”
New Student Leaders
The New Student Leaders number simply includes students who have completed our Student Leadership Application, are vetted, and have become “official” leaders of their campus chapter. Each chapter has at least 3 officers to function as an official on-campus club. Often there will be more than three leaders at a chapter.
“So do you only have 27 new leaders for next academic year at your 70+ campuses?” That would be the question I would ask. The reality is that students need not fill out our application to become a leader of their club; however, we strongly encourage it because it helps us know a bit about the students and support them as best as possible. Plus, I get to read their testimonies and desires for the campus chapter.
What is the goal? Ideally, I would like to have a student leader application for all our active campuses. That leads us to our next number …
Active Campus Chapters
In the Western region, there are 74 schools that I consider eligible for CMDA chapters. These include, dental, optometry, medical, and osteopathic schools. We want and have some chapters at schools where there is a Physician Assistant’s program, but for the sake of numbers, I am counting just those four. Some campuses have more than one school at them, though, like Loma Linda University, which has a medical school, dental school, and physician assistant program. Western University in Pomona and Midwestern, outside of Phoenix, have optometry, osteopathic and dental. That’s nine schools! But I am calling them just 3 campuses.
So, of the 64 campuses where there are healthcare schools, we have active chapters on 49 of them. I define active as a group that has at least one student, campus advisor, or faculty member who is associated with that school and I have spoken with them in the last academic year.
Community Events Attended
This is an easy one for me to measure: if I am at an event where more than two others were invited, it’s a community event! What is cool about this is that there are community events going on all over the region that I do not attend. My hope is that we will get more and more healthcare professionals to connect with one another on a regular basis.
Define regular, you ask? I think a community chapter is viable if in a year they meet at least three times for fellowship and do at least one external service project with their healthcare gifts/resources. The three gatherings are typically:
- Welcome students back in the fall for a BBQ at someone’s home
- Congratulate and send off students leaving campus (both graduates and 2nd years who will do their rotations away from campus)
- A speaker or guest come share with local healthcare professionals by way of encouragement, awareness, and/or challenge.
Some of our community chapters do much more than this, but for a local chapter to get started, this may help to know exactly what it looks like!
Connections Made
This is what I find myself doing the most, it seems. It is certainly where I have the biggest ah-ha moments! Connecting professionals to students, residents to professionals, residents to residents, missionaries to professionals, etc. The list can go on and one.
Connections made are not connections I make with people but connections God uses me for people to connect with other people.
I just try not to get too much in the way!
It is absolutely wild. Just in the last three months I’ve been used connect the following:
- A medical missions group in Alaska to my dear friends in Madagascar
- A resident going to USC from Cal Northstate in Sacramento with another USC resident coming from upstate New York
- A campus advisor in Hawaii with a another in New York
- Two pregnancy centers with some of our resources and advocacy team
- A resident with a chaplain at the hospital he will be serving
That is just some off the top of my head. Humbling, to say the least! And for there to have been over 30 in the three months recorded is mind-blowing. Each of these connections has the opportunity to make impacts we will never see. It’s amazing!
So that is the scoop on the numbers in the graphic. I hope it helps. Take a moment just to thank God for/with me for all that He has been able to accomplish. They’re things we may never see, but each number represents impact upon way more than just the one who is being counted.
To read more about goals and measuring them, check out my blog on “Measuring Success.”