As we start to wind down for the holiday season, I want to wish everyone at the CoM and our partners in education and healthcare all the very best!

It has been a great year for our college. We came together as a team to deliver a solid, well-organized accreditation visit at the end of October. The documentation and visit planning required to achieve this took up significant time and energy, and was of course a very big focus of our year. While we await the outcome of the visit, we can take satisfaction in achieving this major hurdle together, as we head into what I hope for each of you will be a peaceful and relaxing time as 2017 draws to a close.

Beyond accreditation, we completed our high-level five-year strategic plan. We’ve made important strides in the biomedical departments restructuring work, and the amalgamation of the current five departments to two departments was approved recently by our faculty council. In 2017, we hired the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and the Saskatchewan Chair in Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Research, and in these roles respectively, Drs. Alexandra King and Michael Levin have begun their important work for our province and the world. We continued to support our researchers with our internal funding programs and celebrated their successes garnering external grants. We saw our One Faculty model achieve success with significant, measurable increases in medical faculty engagement in the mission of the college. The Saskatchewan Health Authority launched earlier this month, and our college played and will continue to play an important role in supporting and participating in this transformation. This just touches on some of the highlights of 2017.

Most importantly, thank you for your work for our college over the past year! I look forward to working with you in 2018, as we continue together to improve the health and well-being of the people of Saskatchewan and the world.

For now, however, let us rest, rejuvenate and enjoy this special time of year.