Message From the President

Go ahead and be proud

I know I’m not the first to note the general hesitancy among Bennies to brag. About anything. But today I’d like to encourage you to try it out. It’s a great time to be a Saint Ben’s alumna. You are graduates of a great women’s college. And, as the recent Forbes.com article “Want Your Daughter To Go to the C-Suite? Send Her to a Women’s College” illustrates, that’s a very good thing. Mount Holyoke College alumna Kate Winick says in the article that, “Being in an environment where people other than men hold every leadership position, run every project, lead every team and sit at the top of every class is empowering in the extreme. You’re given the opportunity to get comfortable with the sound of your own voice and get used to being heard, and you go out into the world ready and expecting to lead.” So be proud! And one thing we’re proud of at Saint Ben’s is the way we develop nurses who are well prepared for leadership as well as their licensure exams. The Benedictine values they learn here make them compassionate and attentive providers. Since we began in 1969, our Nursing Department has grown to become one of our most respected and competitive majors and a producer of the best nurse-leaders in the region. It’s something we do incredibly well. And it’s a field where our alums shine. In 2015, we were able to reimagine a thoroughly advanced space on the fourth floor of our Main Building and create the Guy and Barbara Schoenecker Nursing Education Suite. In 2020, we expanded the cohort of students in our undergraduate nursing major by a third. We’re now able to admit 72 new students into the major every year. Those were both big deals. But this year’s news is even bigger. This fall, the first cohort of graduate students in our new Doctor of Nursing Practice – Family Nurse Practitioner and Doctor of Nursing Practice Leadership programs began coursework toward what will be the first graduate degrees ever conferred by the College of Saint Benedict – the first doctoral degrees conferred by Saint Ben’s or Saint John’s. Sometimes community need, faculty excellence and alum support come together, and this is one of those times. Our state – and especially rural communities in our state – lack well-trained health-care providers. Our faculty, with their great expertise, have been proposing, planning and advocating for a program like this for several years. And, when the new doctoral nursing programs were announced, our seats filled quickly – primarily with CSB/SJU nursing alums. Your alma mater is now offering accredited, respected graduate nursing programs. And we see this as a bold first step that opens the door for other potential graduate programs in other areas where our academic strengths mesh with the community’s needs and the market’s demands. But that’s a story for another day. Today, in this issue of Saint Benedict Magazine, we’re going to look at the college’s relationship with health care: our new graduate programs, our growing footprint in education for a variety of health professions, and the remarkable history of how the sisters of our founding Order of Saint Benedict laid the groundwork that led us to this place. It’s a proud leadership tradition – and we’re continuing to build on it.

This fall, the first cohort of graduate students in our new Doctor of Nursing Practice – Family Nurse Practitioner and Doctor of Nursing Practice Leadership programs began coursework toward what will be the first doctoral degrees ever conferred by the College of Saint Benedict or Saint John’s.

Laurie M. Hamen, J.D.

College of Saint Benedict Transitional President