2019 Future Leaders of Optometry Award The Preston Cup to University of Houston College of Optometry's Private Practice Club - Student Optometric Practice Management Association (UHCO SOPMA)!
Award presented at the 9th Annual Student Optometric Leadership Network (SOLutioN) Leadership Conference in Raleigh, NC
President: Katelyn McDevitt President-Elect: Joseph Kirgis
Congratulations UHCO SOPMA!
List and explain the activities your club has done over the past year to advance business education for your student members:
We have held a whopping 9 meetings this semester, and 2 social events for our members to have a wide variety of business education. We began with a summer meeting sponsored by Vision Source that allowed members to hear about the MentorOD program along with Vision Source Next. We kicked off the year with our 2nd annual Kickball Tournament where we partnered up with OSA and provided a tank-top, tons of water and beer and Chick-Fil-A along with some kickball fun. The first meeting of the Fall semester we had Dr. Danielle Richardson (@FierceClarity) along with B+L come in to talk with members about finding your niche and bringing it into optometry. Dr. Richardson focused on physical health and providing yourself an outlet and how that outlet could also expand your patient base. Next we had Dr. Will To sponsored by VSP joined by Matt Geller from Covalent Careers. We had them talk about contracts and negotiations with our members along with starting up a LinkedIn account and what items to include. We had one of our Exec Team members that does photography take headshots for members to use on their LinkedIn profiles. Following this we had Dr. Krivacic sponsored by J&J come to speak with members about how to keep a practice relevant and key tips he had for us along with key metrics within the profession. At this meeting we had John Soper - an Optician that consults with practices on strengthening an optical. We had an amazing opportunity to partner up with the Myopia Control elective and bring in Dr. Gary Gerber to speak about Myopia Control in a practice along with how he incorporates his own startup Treehouse Eyes in practices. We had our final meeting of the semester at a nearby brewery with Essilor and Transitions with Dr. Pete Kehoe, Dr. Lauren Fereday and Dr. Ryan Parker where they spoke about the Essilor summer internship program and Dr. Kehoe spoke about the new transition lenses (style colors and mirrors) that had come out earlier in the year! We also played an interactive gave with the members where Transitions gave prizes to the winning member on the quiz. One AMAZING thing we had this year was the practice crawl with Vision Source in December. We were able to have busses bring us to 3 different practices across Houston where we heard a little story of how they started up, how they decided on Vision Source and left it open to any questions we had. This event provided us food at every location and alcoholic beverages or soda for the ride. Our spring semester we partnered again with VSP and we had Dr. Mindy Nguyen out to UHCO. She spoke with us on billing and inventory to maximize reimbursement. We opened this up to our exec team to pick which item was most requested in the class pages. She was able to briefly touch on opening a practice cold because we had not had someone talk about this yet during the academic year. Second we had Dr. David Kading from Optometric Insights come in to speak with us on their topics from SOLN last summer. A guide on the things they wish they knew before starting their practice - different key metrics to look at and a breakup on the percentage of costs of a practice. FINALLY to wrap up the year we ended with the Texas State Optical at our favorite brewery in Houston where Dr. Reid Robertson drove down and was joined by Dr. Chen to speak about the process of figuring out how to get a loan and where to go about this. Along with this he explained what to and what not to spend your money on after graduation within the first five years.
How have you worked to improve your club over the past year?
Over the past year I really tried to push our social media presence. We started up our Instagram to reach out to the incoming first year class to try and grab their attention and make members aware of other items at UHCO that were private practice oriented for them to find more info! Along with this my main goal was to expand the doctors coming in to speak from all over the US. UHCO has increased in out of state students and past years have included a large amount of Texas born, raised and rooted docs and I wanted to bring in Doctors from each region of the country which I succeeded in, except a slight hiccup we were unable to have an East Coast doctor.
In what ways has your club or club leaders helped to advance the Student Optometric Leadership Network?
We have made members more aware of SOLN by incorporating SOLN into our orientation presentation so students understand we have support nationally. Along with this, talking about SOLN at the high attendance meetings at the beginning of the semester to make them aware. Personally I tried to share to everyone at Academy as well in San Antonio to attend the mixer, and posted a short little blurb with this about SOLN.
List any other milestones, accomplishments, and/or reasons your club is deserving of the Preston Cup this year:
This year we have pushed SOPMA to stay relevant and compiled the last 5 years of information on a google drive to strive for organization for the club and to ensure we are providing the most relevant information for members. My biggest goal was to bring new information to members that they had not yet seen, and to bring in new faces and docs from all over the US so members could gain knowledge from brilliant minds across this great country. We wanted to bring more than just lectures to members this year which is why we brought in a workshop type event with Covalent Careers and VSP, two different mixer events at breweries to make it an event for easy conversation between all. Along with this, having the Practice Crawl with Vision Source was by far the greatest new addition. Members raved about being able to see 3 extremely different practices and for the ability to speak with the docs on how they found their niche, selected their locations, and how they decided to move forward with Vision Source. SOPMA 2018-2019 was an amazing year full of so much growth and a 75% capture rate of our 1st-3rd year students!
We have held a whopping 9 meetings this semester, and 2 social events for our members to have a wide variety of business education. We began with a summer meeting sponsored by Vision Source that allowed members to hear about the MentorOD program along with Vision Source Next. We kicked off the year with our 2nd annual Kickball Tournament where we partnered up with OSA and provided a tank-top, tons of water and beer and Chick-Fil-A along with some kickball fun. The first meeting of the Fall semester we had Dr. Danielle Richardson (@FierceClarity) along with B+L come in to talk with members about finding your niche and bringing it into optometry. Dr. Richardson focused on physical health and providing yourself an outlet and how that outlet could also expand your patient base. Next we had Dr. Will To sponsored by VSP joined by Matt Geller from Covalent Careers. We had them talk about contracts and negotiations with our members along with starting up a LinkedIn account and what items to include. We had one of our Exec Team members that does photography take headshots for members to use on their LinkedIn profiles. Following this we had Dr. Krivacic sponsored by J&J come to speak with members about how to keep a practice relevant and key tips he had for us along with key metrics within the profession. At this meeting we had John Soper - an Optician that consults with practices on strengthening an optical. We had an amazing opportunity to partner up with the Myopia Control elective and bring in Dr. Gary Gerber to speak about Myopia Control in a practice along with how he incorporates his own startup Treehouse Eyes in practices. We had our final meeting of the semester at a nearby brewery with Essilor and Transitions with Dr. Pete Kehoe, Dr. Lauren Fereday and Dr. Ryan Parker where they spoke about the Essilor summer internship program and Dr. Kehoe spoke about the new transition lenses (style colors and mirrors) that had come out earlier in the year! We also played an interactive gave with the members where Transitions gave prizes to the winning member on the quiz. One AMAZING thing we had this year was the practice crawl with Vision Source in December. We were able to have busses bring us to 3 different practices across Houston where we heard a little story of how they started up, how they decided on Vision Source and left it open to any questions we had. This event provided us food at every location and alcoholic beverages or soda for the ride. Our spring semester we partnered again with VSP and we had Dr. Mindy Nguyen out to UHCO. She spoke with us on billing and inventory to maximize reimbursement. We opened this up to our exec team to pick which item was most requested in the class pages. She was able to briefly touch on opening a practice cold because we had not had someone talk about this yet during the academic year. Second we had Dr. David Kading from Optometric Insights come in to speak with us on their topics from SOLN last summer. A guide on the things they wish they knew before starting their practice - different key metrics to look at and a breakup on the percentage of costs of a practice. FINALLY to wrap up the year we ended with the Texas State Optical at our favorite brewery in Houston where Dr. Reid Robertson drove down and was joined by Dr. Chen to speak about the process of figuring out how to get a loan and where to go about this. Along with this he explained what to and what not to spend your money on after graduation within the first five years.
How have you worked to improve your club over the past year?
Over the past year I really tried to push our social media presence. We started up our Instagram to reach out to the incoming first year class to try and grab their attention and make members aware of other items at UHCO that were private practice oriented for them to find more info! Along with this my main goal was to expand the doctors coming in to speak from all over the US. UHCO has increased in out of state students and past years have included a large amount of Texas born, raised and rooted docs and I wanted to bring in Doctors from each region of the country which I succeeded in, except a slight hiccup we were unable to have an East Coast doctor.
In what ways has your club or club leaders helped to advance the Student Optometric Leadership Network?
We have made members more aware of SOLN by incorporating SOLN into our orientation presentation so students understand we have support nationally. Along with this, talking about SOLN at the high attendance meetings at the beginning of the semester to make them aware. Personally I tried to share to everyone at Academy as well in San Antonio to attend the mixer, and posted a short little blurb with this about SOLN.
List any other milestones, accomplishments, and/or reasons your club is deserving of the Preston Cup this year:
This year we have pushed SOPMA to stay relevant and compiled the last 5 years of information on a google drive to strive for organization for the club and to ensure we are providing the most relevant information for members. My biggest goal was to bring new information to members that they had not yet seen, and to bring in new faces and docs from all over the US so members could gain knowledge from brilliant minds across this great country. We wanted to bring more than just lectures to members this year which is why we brought in a workshop type event with Covalent Careers and VSP, two different mixer events at breweries to make it an event for easy conversation between all. Along with this, having the Practice Crawl with Vision Source was by far the greatest new addition. Members raved about being able to see 3 extremely different practices and for the ability to speak with the docs on how they found their niche, selected their locations, and how they decided to move forward with Vision Source. SOPMA 2018-2019 was an amazing year full of so much growth and a 75% capture rate of our 1st-3rd year students!
UHCO SOPMA's 2018-19 Club Officers
