Dear Colleagues:

Christine Pacini

It is my great privilege and honor to send my first letter to College of Health Professions alumni in this issue of Healthy Times. As an alumna of both University of Detroit and Mercy College of Detroit, I welcome all of you to the community of outstanding practitioners, scholars and leaders who either began their careers in health professions at Mercy College, Mercy School of Nursing, or the University of Detroit Mercy, or further established their careers at the University of Detroit, Mercy College or UDM. We collectively represent extraordinary breadth and depth in our heritage and contributions to the greater well being of patients, families and providers in the city of Detroit, the surrounding region, the state of Michigan, other states and regions in the United States, and across the globe. Ours is a tradition formed by the charisms of the Sisters of Mercy and the Society of Jesus. As such, we collectively serve to provide "care to the sick, the ignorant and the poor" and manifest our destiny as "women and men for others."

As a product of the extraordinary education that I received here, I am profoundly grateful to the faculty, administrators, staff and classmates for all of their many gifts that contributed to my formation. I am also equally grateful to the many students who I was privileged to teach. They filled me with optimism, hope, passion and energy. And so I feel a great sense of obligation as I assume this position of leadership in the College of Health Professions. We are a College of exceptional heritage and tradition, yet we also represent continuous improvement and vision in the ever-changing arena of health care.

I hope that you are encouraged by CHP's growth and ongoing creativity. I welcome you to stay in touch with the College and the program(s) from which you graduated. We are extremely proud of every one of our alumni and hope to engage you in our continued growth and improvement.

On behalf of all the faculty and staff of CHP, I thank you for your support and look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Christine Pacini, Ph.D., RN
Dean, CHP/MSON
Christine.pacini@udmercy.edu