MCPTAA
President’s Letter
To my fellow Mayo Alum,
The challenges of the last year have been unprecedented but I hope this newsletter finds you all well with normalcy returning to your work and personal lives. It is my privilege to be writing to you as the new Mayo Clinic Physical Therapy Alumni Association Board President. As you know, the MCPTAA board is an incredibly motivated and dedicated group of professionals and I look forward to supporting this group over the next 3 years. Our overarching mission remains the same, connect and serve current and future alumni. However, our methods to achieve this mission continue to evolve.
Where to begin…the world has changed so much since our last newsletter and the alumni board is no different. We had our scheduled changing of the guard for the past-president, president, and vice-president roles. We’ve had several committee position changes and welcomed new board members. Sadly, we also made the tough decision to cancel the 2020 and 2021 fall course and fall gathering due to pandemic and social gathering restrictions.
With challenge comes progress. Our pause in course planning has given us the time to focus on new efforts to increase engagement and fundraising. Our new flagship effort is our mentorship program. Both Kelsie Miller and Shanna Britt, from the membership committee, have done an outstanding job. In its first year, we successfully paired 33 students with mentors. In total, we had 63 volunteers to be mentors. We have not had a program engage this many in years. We are enjoying the success and looking forward to launching the second year of the program soon. For more detail on the program and information on how to get involved see below.
Although the mentor program is off to a great start, we continue to have ongoing challenges with fundraising. Historically, the revenue from our continuing education course would be enough to support the association’s activities. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years the course has failed to bring in enough revenue to cover expenses. We have had to cut the number of student activities we support due to the difficulty with fundraising. To avoid further cuts, we continue to look for new fundraising opportunities and look to all alum for additional ideas.
Ongoing efforts of the board will continue to focus on minimizing financial loss, increasing active alumni membership, and increasing opportunities for current and future alumni. These goals take effort and the board can’t do it alone. If you are reading this, you are interested in staying connected to the Mayo Clinic PT community. I ask you support us in any way you can. We always welcome donations and membership renewals. We also have several open positions on the board. We truly can’t do this without you.
As always, if you have interest in participating or ideas for us, don’t hesitate to reach out to any board member. We welcome your input and support as we grow our Mayo Clinic PT family.
Gratefully,
Katie Traver, PT, DPT, ATC
Class of 2012