Thursday

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Operational Excellence begins with Respect for People and Humanity

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Leaders: Mary C Tetreault, Tanise L Jackson Moderator: Mary C Tetreault Facilitator: TBN Panelist: Gerald M Cronin, Sharron M Kirchain, Donna M Jarrell Full employee engagement and creativity are unleashed in an environment of trust, empathy, and empowerment. Operational excellence is achieved when every employee is supported by clearly defined processes and tasks and leaders in the organization practice providing such support. Bringing employee engagement, employee creativity, and leaders who demonstrate servant leadership together is the right recipe for a truly inclusive and agile organization. We will explore how commitment to respect for people and humanity is the foundation for creating a lean operational excellence culture during this panel session. Our panelists will discuss how respect is defined and put into practice at their institutions, servant leadership’s definition and how to put it into practice, how creativity can be enhanced through full employee engagement, how operational excellence drives creativity, and the culture of care, successes, failures, and what we’ve learned. Signals that may indicate that your culture is suffering include low employee morale, quality of work concerns, interpersonal conflict, excessive sick callouts, attrition, and possibly even sabotage. Employees who feel valued become more engaged and more productive, leading to realizing a true learning organization. Institutional leadership’s commitment to a “people first” culture with unwavering trust in their workforce is the DNA of an OpEx environment. As such, many of the techniques presented in this panel discussion require minimal cost to implement. The target audience is leadership and upper management. This Panel Discussion is sponsored in part by Vivarium Operational Excellence Network.

Our Common Vision: What Can Research and Animal Activist Communities Accomplish if They Work Together?

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Leader/Moderator: Cindy A Buckmaster Facilitator: Teresa L Neubauer Panelist: Cindy A Buckmaster, Jodi Salinsky, Tara M Jackson There is currently a great divide between the research and animal activist communities in the US on how to decrease and replace the use of animals in research aimed at benefitting humans. This has generated decades of fear, stress, frustration, attacks on researchers, mistrust on both sides, and mixed messages to the public and lawmakers. Is any of this really helping our animals or moving us closer to a day when they are truly not needed for biomedical progress? The tactics and campaigns of the past were not realistic and compassionate toward all living beings, and we believe that the existing mentality is hampering our progress toward stronger science, faster cures, and fewer animals. There are distinct differences between the goals of those working in the fields of animal-based research and those generally opposed to it. Still, our goal is to truly improve life for people and animals. We propose a new concept that allows research and animal activist communities to work together to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes in animal-based research. In this session, we will discuss our current issues, the potential for healthier relationships modeled on what has been occurring in New Zealand over the past few years, and hope that this encourages robust and proactive discussion that allows us to move forward with love and compassion for people and animals and shape our medical future - together. Target audience: members of the AALAS and research animal communities.

Refined Mouse Handling: Practical Applications

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Leader/Moderator: Megan R LaFollette Facilitator: Sarah E Thurston Panelist: Donna L Goldsteen, Elizabeth A Nunamaker, Mark J Prescott, Erin Straley, Shaina R Wallach Rather than traditional tail handling, strong evidence indicates that it is advantageous to pick mice up with tunnels or cupped hands before standard procedures. Refined mouse handling improves animal welfare, scientific quality, and ease of handling. Furthermore, it is fully compatible with procedures such as cage change, injection, oral gavage, and anesthesia. However, switching the mouse handling practices of an entire institution or even research group can come with challenges such as retraining, tunnel purchasing, and changing operations. In this panel, participants will briefly learn about the evidence for refined mouse handling, followed by a more in-depth discussion of its application with plenty of time for participant questions. The target audiences for this presentation are research staff, IACUC members, animal care staff, veterinarians, and vivarium managers that work with mice. This Panel Discussion is sponsored in part by The North American 3Rs Collaborative (NA3RsC).

The CUSP Sharing Site: Coming Soon to an Institution Near You!

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Leader: Aubrey Schoenleben Moderator: Scott D Bury Facilitator: Sally Thompson-Iritani Panelist: Michelle Brot, Thomas E Todd, Melanie A Lucas, Aubrey Schoenleben The CUSP database is a repository for standard methodologies and procedures that are being used at research labs at institutions across the country. Submitted procedures are collated and organized in the database. They are available for the larger research community to peruse and potentially integrate after they are reviewed and approved at the user’s home institution. This project is a burden reducing initiative of the 21st Century Cures Act and is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Demonstration Partnership. In this session, panelists will present an overview and update on the progress of the CUSP project. Benefits of using CUSP include reduced administrative burden and increased consistency across similar research groups. Participants will learn how their institution can utilize the procedure library for both submitting and accessing procedures, details about the system’s security, and the important role of institutional representatives, individuals designated by each institution who will facilitate the implementation of CUSP at their institution. Another topic covered will be the planned inclusion of procedures related to wildlife studies, and additionally, to the husbandry and veterinary care for non-typical research species, such as cephalopods, bats, marsupials, songbirds, etc. An interactive session will encourage audience members to try out a live version of the database by calling out procedures and species of interest. This will provide a clear picture of how the system works to encourage more institutions to participate in the CUSP project. The target audience for this presentation should be anyone interested in learning more about the CUSP project and how it can help to reduce administrative and researcher burdens. This Panel Discussion is sponsored in part by Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).