Revolutionizing health education

Metropolitan State University of Denver ushered in the future of patient-centered health care in September with the opening of its Interprofessional Simulation and Skills Laboratory, or Sim Labs. The state-of-the-art space, a centerpiece of the Gina and Frank Day Health Institute at MSU Denver, features a nurses station, ambulance bay, home health lab and other simulated care environments. The Sim Labs let students put their learning into action to address Colorado’s urgent health care workforce needs. The state is estimated to have a shortfall of more than 10,000 registered nurses and 54,000 allied health positions by 2026.

“With the new Sim Labs, our programs will have the space to grow, allowing us to train and send even more skilled health care professionals into the workforce in the state they call home,” said Hope Szypulski, DNP, dean of MSU Denver’s College of Health and Human Sciences.

To a great degree

Lisa Johnson, a 59-year-old grandmother of six, was “overwhelmed” when she learned she would receive her degree.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I’m the first one to graduate from college in my family. It took me a long time.”

Johnson is among 336 former students who accepted Associate of General Studies degrees from Metropolitan State University of Denver this year, thanks to a 2021 bill passed by the Colorado legislature. The degrees were awarded to students who had accumulated at least 70 credit hours but stopped short of completing their bachelor’s degrees.

Twenty-seven of those former students, including Johnson, were recognized in a first-of-its-kind event in June. More than 200 people attended the celebration, held on the Auraria Campus.

The University does not usually award associate degrees — it last did so in 1973, said Shaun Schafer, Ph.D., MSU Denver’s associate vice president of Curriculum, Academic Effectiveness and Policy Development. But the Colorado Re-Engaged (CORE) Initiative, established through House Bill 21-1330, allows universities to grant associate degrees for stoppedout students who meet certain qualifications.

MSU Denver’s effort to offer the degrees started last year, when staff members in the Office of the Registrar worked to identify nearly 4,000 people who were potentially eligible. “We had this moment of ‘We want to recognize these folks,’” Schafer said.

Johnson, a Florida native who spent 20 years in the Army, took her first college course while she was stationed in Germany. Postings in various U.S. installations followed. “I was taking classes here and there at different universities, although I didn’t have a lot of time,” she said. “I was a single parent of three kids, and it was very, very hard. But I did it.”

Her final posting was in Denver. She enrolled at MSU Denver in 2010 and took classes in Early Childhood Education and Social Work while working at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. But her life ground to a halt in 2020 when she got Covid and had to take six months off from work. Long-Covid symptoms forced her to pause her education, but Johnson plans to return to MSU Denver to complete a bachelor’s degree.

The pool of graduates receiving associate degrees this year was 58% male, and the oldest recipient was 76. They are from 15 states, and nearly 55% were firstgeneration college students.