Marshall B. Ketchum University’s Southern California College of Optometry Welcomes its Newest Faculty Member Dr. Heidi Wagner, OD, MPH, FAAO

Marshall B. Ketchum University’s Southern California College of Optometry Welcomes its Newest Faculty Member Dr. Heidi Wagner, OD, MPH, FAAO

Dr. Heidi Wagner is very new to Southern California College of Optometry, having commenced her official duties as one of SCCO’s most recent faculty hires just one month ago, but SCCO is not necessarily new to Dr. Wagner. Throughout her career as an optometrist and an educator, Dr. Wagner has experienced a number of memorable touchpoints with the place and the people of SCCO, particularly at that important moment in her life when she was deciding whether or not to become a full-time optometric educator. In the midst of making her decision, Dr. Wagner attended the annual meeting of the Association of Optometric Contact Lens Educators, which happened to be hosted by SCCO that year. And even though it was a rare cold and rainy weekend in Southern California, Dr. Wagner never forgot the warm camaraderie and enthusiastic collegiality of the dedicated educators she encountered there, among them Dr. Tim Edrington, Dr. Julie Schornack, and the late Dr. Harue Marsden.

Dr. Wagner has also previously collaborated with SCCO faculty on a number of research projects, such as the NEI-funded Collaborative Longitudinal Evaluation of Keratoconus Study, and another study assessing risk factors for contact lens complications among youth. It is safe to say, then, that as she embarks on a major new phase in her career as a Professor of Optometry at SCCO, Dr. Wagner is eager to know and experience the institution from the vantage of one of its respected faculty.

Another facet of Dr. Wagner’s approach to optometry and education also commends her to MBKU: her desire to connect with people makes MBKU’s patient- and student-centered methods of instruction a natural fit. This is also one of the main reasons she went into the field of optometry in the first place, as it was there that she discovered she could practice science-based health care in a more human setting with a fair amount of autonomy. She developed a strong interest in contact lens care, and her research work with keratoconus was always grounded in the tangible benefits that patients experienced as a result.

“Keratoconus is a problem that we in optometry have learned to manage well,” she explains. “And I gained a lot of personal satisfaction from being able to mange patients with that condition and similar conditions. And, even after all these years, I still think it’s fun to have a child or young adolescent get their first vision correction and to witness how excited they are to be able to see! I really enjoy that role; I find it challenging and interesting, but I also find it rewarding.”

Dr. Wagner has found life as an optometric educator very rewarding as well. After she and her husband Dr. Christopher Woodruff each completed their OD at Ohio State University, they took over a solo private practice. This afforded Dr. Wagner the chance to pursue a number of different opportunities, among them practicing in an academic health center at her alma mater. From there came the aforementioned decision to become a full-time educator, which led her and her husband to Nova Southeastern University, where they both served on the faculty for over 20 years.

Dr. Wagner loves teaching in small group settings where she is able to get to know her students well and offer true mentorship, whether it be in a clinic, scholarly or research work, or helping a recent graduate transition into becoming a confident provider of care. She also thrives in administrative roles where she has the opportunity to build projects from scratch and/or help them grow and succeed, the most recent example of which was her work over the past six years back at Ohio State, where she had returned to lead the OSUCO externship program.

MBKU’s commitment to service is yet another reason Dr. Wagner can expect to flourish in SCCO’s community. With a Master’s in Public Health informing her more broad approach to health care populations, Dr. Wagner is always thinking of how optometrists can uniquely serve patients and their communities with public health initiatives that include and go beyond optometry. She counts her mentorship of students as a crucial component of this.

“It’s really important for us as educators to mentor the next generation of health care providers,” she says. “It’s important for us to be role models, and to show them how we choose to devote our time and resources, and how we do the right things for the people in our communities as health care providers.”