Dear Animal Researchers,
Thank you for contributing to a successful AAALAC site visit for 2025. ULAR has provided the following summary of accolades and information regarding results:
We did it – our 2025 AAALAC Site Visit (March 3-7) is complete!
Thank you for the partnerships across schools, laboratories, facilities groups, and teams to ensure our animal areas were in top shape for the AAALAC visit! This is a 6-months long preparation process for a 1-week long site visit – and we couldn’t do it without everyone involved.
Kudos/commendations from our site visitors included (in no particular order of importance):
- Clear presence of a Culture of Care including the concept and integration of 3Rs.
- Comprehensive records documentation seen across the program.
- Conscientious animal care supervisors: animal care spaces across campuses and facilities were clean and well managed.
- Excellent Veterinary Care Program: healthy animals observed across all locations.
- Robust and commendable Post Approval Monitoring (PAM) Program with a focus on education, preventative measures, and outreach.
- Dedicated training program with team members providing hands-on teaching and addressing compassion fatigue.
One mandatory item to address involves our occupational health and assessment program – we will have to investigate specific concerns about personnel enrollment and health tracking, as well as NHP areas and TB clearance of personnel – this will mean Deferred Accreditation Status for the University’s program until it is resolved and then we return to Continued Full Accreditation status.
There were several (n=15) Suggestions for Improvement (SFIs) – which are items for which we can provide a plan or determine we will not change current programmatic practices.
Our Animal Care Program stakeholders in ULAR, OAW, EHRS, and OHS have been reviewing items and our Post-Site Visit Communication (PSVC) was submitted to AAALAC on March 24th.
Overall it was a very AAALAC successful visit with high praise across the institution for the collegiality, collaboration and investment (of funds, equipment and personnel) in our animal care and research program at Penn! Congratulations!
To learn more, please join us for a Post-AAALAC Site Visit town hall, Wednesday, May 7, 2025 at 3 pm.
The agenda will be as follows:
- Findings from the AAALAC accreditation process and its significance to the research community;
- Planned responses for AAALAC Council
- Engage in a Q&A forum to address any queries related to our process and 2025 visit toward the shared goal of continued full accreditation.
Penn animal researchers are encouraged to participate in the TEAMS meeting at the noted time:
Teams* link : Join the meeting
Meeting ID: 221 806 617 384
Passcode: GC9c2wd9
*This meeting will be recorded and link shared to the OAW and ULAR websites