Collaborations

In 1995, the college revised the Master of Science in Nursing to include a concentration for community-oriented, family-focused, clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners.35 The Parish Nursing Program, developed in 2001, is an example of the college’s work. Its goals were to provide training for nurses in church parishes, develop and support the Parish Nurse Network of east central Michigan and establish collaborative relationships with community agencies and organizations.36

Collaborations

To deal with the need for additional qualified faculty and staff to instruct a larger student population, Blecke launched a partnership with Covenant HealthCare, Saint Mary’s of Michigan, Bay Regional Medical Center and Mid-Michigan Medical Center. The university would provide student interns, and the hospitals would reciprocate by encouraging their qualified nurses to serve as part-time instructors. In 2007, Blecke chaired the Health Initiative Task Force, a group created to combat the region’s shrinking number of nurse educators. The task force drew on funds from regional community foundations, the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Underwriting Nursing’s Development Programs to train nurses seeking to teach at institutions such as SVSU on a part-time basis.

Valeriah Ann Holmon, a surgical nurse at Mid-Michigan Medical Center with more than 25 years of experience, referred to her time teaching nursing students at SVSU as “my way of giving back to a profession that I am passionate about.” By 2013, the college was admitting three times as many students as it did at the college’s inception more than 30 years earlier.37

Valeriah Ann Holmon with Janalou Blecke.