Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the sixth issue of the SOVS newsletter for 2018. I’ll be acting Head of School for the next few months while Steven Dakin is away on Research and study leave in the UK. We wish him well during his well-earned break!

This month we’re delighted to welcome Jo Beattie as our new Group Services Manager for the school, who we will be sharing with Nursing. We also welcome our four visiting students from Taiwan, who will be in New Zealand for the next four weeks. They are from the Optometry Department at Asia University, a new Department recently established by Samuel Chiang (BOptom and PhD from SOVS). The students are in Auckland observing in our clinic for the next two weeks and then visiting mentors in several practices around the South Island.

Photo: Taiwan students visit Revision

At the time of writing we are excitedly preparing for our second SOVS conference which is being held on Sunday 29 July.  I would like to thank everyone who has been involved with setting it up and ensuring it runs smoothly. In fact, I’d like to acknowledge everyone’s hard work generally through these cold winter months as we teach, research, study and administer our way through Semester 2.

All the best

Dr John Phillips
Acting Head of School, Optometry and Vision Science
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences