MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

Dear Students, Faculty, Friends, Alumni, and Supporters,

Welcome to the fi rst report from the Marieb College of Health & Human Services. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce a new annual tradition highlighting the many accomplishments of our students, faculty and community engagements after navigating the most unprecedented year that any of us has ever experienced.

Last March, our faculty converted from traditional face-to-face learning to online mechanisms over a weekend — just three days. We now have prevailed through three semesters of modifi ed class sizes, hybrid learning and modifi ed clinical internships. Through all of it, the spirit and resolve of our faculty, staff and students shined through and is stronger than ever. It is an ethic that we have come to know and is paramount to the Marieb College of Health & Human Services.

Despite the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, this annual report shines a spotlight on the many successes we experienced. During the 2020-21 academic year, for example, we graduated the second cohort of the Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies Program. These students excelled on the national licensure examination, scoring 2% above the national average for fi rst-time pass rates. During the pandemic, we also hosted several specialized accreditation visits, including visits from the National Accreditation Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) for our Clinical Laboratory Science program and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) for our graduate counseling programs. Both visits were superb and reaffi rmed the excellence of our Marieb College academic offerings. Additionally, we enrolled our fi rst Doctor of Nursing Practice Nurse Anesthesiology students. We also partnered with industry leader Arthrex to launch one of the fi rst microcredentials at FGCU in the medical device industry. Most importantly, we must highlight the resolve of our faculty and students for their sacrifi ces and commitment to academic excellence. Once the campus allowed students back in June, our faculty was committed to 1:1 lab instruction — often teaching the same content fi ve times a day in recognition of group size and social distancing guidelines — to ensure the excellence we have come to expect.

I welcome you to enjoy the stories highlighted in our fi rst Marieb College of Health & Human Services Annual Report. These stories represent the epitome of our college; however, please remember for every story that we tell in this report there are several more just like it that have gone untold. I am so proud to lead our dedicated faculty and staff and to serve our remarkable students. I hope you enjoy our report and we thank you for your ongoing support.

All the best,

2020 was an unforgettable, pivotal year.

Most crises have a beginning and end date. You respond to hurricane victims, clean up the hurricane and life gets back to normal. But with COVID-19, there is still no end date in sight. Normal left the building a long time ago. And it is never coming back. We are changed forever.

Because of the risk inherent in face-to-face contact with others, FGCU’s Marieb College of Health & Human Services had to pivot. We switched from traditional in-class teaching to virtual in no time at all. We created innovative ways to give our students clinical experience. We reengineered lab exercises to take place online. We successfully maneuvered through reaccreditation processes. We excelled at telehealth. And we found new ways to persist in our calling to serve the community in any way possible. It was a year fi lled with pivots. A year in which the rules kept changing. And a year in which we learned how uniquely qualifi ed we are at adapting. It was, ultimately, a year none of us will ever forget.

MARIEB COLLEGE OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES

} School of Nursing } Department of Counseling } Department of Health Sciences } Department of Rehabilitation Sciences } Department of Social Work