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The School of Nursing Newsletter - From the Office of Dean Patricia Starck
May 04, 2009
Here we are at the week of graduation and students, staff, and faculty are all focused on the big day. Our speaker is Dr. Lynn Oswald, an alumna of our nursing school who also earned the PhD degree from our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is now on faculty at the University of Maryland. She will be giving a presentation at noon on Friday, May 8 on “Understanding Pathways to Addiction” in SON 508.
In the spotlight last week were three of our students nominated for Methodist Hospital’s Outstanding Student Award. This year our finalists were Justin Bull, Eliza McHard, and Ryan Trull. All 3 of them are 2nd degree students, all are participating in work-study, and all came highly recommended by faculty. All of these students have practiced community service most of their lives and they all look for opportunities to “give back.” They all love to focus efforts on underserved populations when possible. All of them are planning on attending graduate school, and Eliza wants to go into nursing education. Ryan will be commissioned as an officer in the National Guard after graduation. Justin wants to be a nurse practitioner. Justin & Eliza have degrees from Texas A&M, and Ryan’s degree is from Virginia Commonwealth. It was a hard choice, but Eliza was the winner of this year’s award. Dr. Renae Schumann, Interim Chair of the Department of Acute and Continuing Care and Coordinator of the BSN program represented the School.
We were pleased to also show off our students last Wednesday evening at the Sigma Theta Tau event honoring our BSN Honors students (students selected to work with faculty on their research projects) and the PhD students, all of whom presented their posters and gave a podium presentation about their interesting research work. Stephanie Meyers is the President of our Zeta Pi chapter, and Dr. Renae Schumann is in charge of the BSN Honors Program.
The Greater Houston Partnership and the Gulf Coast Workforce Solutions Health Affairs Committee met last week with our new Chair, Janiece Longoria, who is also a UT Regent. The Committee has been inactive for a while because of a gap in leadership, but the group is focused on moving us forward to meet the challenges of the nursing workforce shortages. Perhaps you saw the two recent editorials in the Houston Chronicle related to this matter and the importance of state funding to enable us to increase enrollment. We should know by the end of May when the Texas Legislature finishes its session what our increase in budget will be so that we may expand faculty and students. Our plan to do so is in place with the new class to be admitted in January, 2010.
The PARTNERS Executive Board met last week to finalize the financial picture of their revenues and expenditures so that decisions can be made about distribution of funds. The full Board will meet next week, after which we can announce their decisions. I was very pleased with the successful year they had under the leadership of Bette Thomas and look forward to the upcoming year with Sheri Henriksen as Chair.
There was a large crowd in attendance at the School of Public Health program presented by the Fleming Center for Healthcare Management under the leadership of Dr. Osama Mikhail to hear four Presidents speak about the future of academic medicine. Dr. William Butler from Baylor, Dr. Larry Kaiser from UTHSC-H, Dr. John Mendelsohn from MD Anderson, and Dr. Dirk Sostman, Executive Vice Dean at Weill Medical College of Cornell University all had interesting and provocative thoughts about the future in relation to our missions of education, service, and patient care/community service. The moderator, Dr. Tim Garson from the University of Virginia, and alum of our SPH, prodded the panelists on some tough issues. I was pleased to hear our UT panelists speak of the importance of the interdisciplinary team, and particularly the important role of nurses and the significant contributions of nurse practitioners. It is such a privilege to be in this community of scholars with intellectually stimulating opportunities like this almost every week.
The senior’s Pinning Ceremony will be held on Thursday, May 7 starting with a reception at 1:00 pm and the ceremony at 2:00 pm. It will be held at the Crowne Plaza Reliant Park on Kirby. Students have raised the funds for this event; PARTNERS furnish the School pins for all graduates and participate in the ceremony.
The Commencement Ceremony will be at 7:00 pm at the George R. Brown Convention Center with 258 graduates. Sigma Theta Tau inductees will have a dinner preceding from 4:00-6:00 pm.
Have a good week.
Dean Starck
