Regional Healthcare

The College of Education entered a key transitional period as the university completed its first half-century.

The interest in elementary and secondary education careers had grown significantly in the Great Lakes Bay Region during the 1990s, producing an enrollment rate for the College of Education that exceeded the national average. But a 2003 internal report warned that such growth in enrollment numbers would not continue. “Employment opportunities in elementary and secondary education are predicted to decline after 2013,” the report indicated, “with a consequent lessening of interest in education as a career field.”

The predictions were uncomfortably accurate, and the downturn in opportunities for graduates occurred faster than authorities anticipated. Between 2004 and 2007, the incoming student population in the College of Education declined more than 55 percent. Education graduates had to search for jobs in states other than Michigan, and significantly fewer new students embraced education as a career.

The economic recession of 2008-2009 capped a decade of single-state depression in Michigan. As many families left to seek jobs elsewhere, compounding the effects of a demographic dip in potential students, schools cut staff and closed campuses to match declining enrollment. Changes in state law eliminated incentives for postgraduate study; enrollments in the college’s graduate degree programs plunged and by 2013, education degree enrollments at SVSU were approximately a third of what they were at their peak. The college responded by exploring ways to reduce credit hours and become more attractive to potential students.31

Regional Healthcare

Almost from its inception, the university had planned a program in health sciences, and various feasibility reports were commissioned in the ensuring years. In 1974, Crystal M. Lange, who directed the associate degree program in nursing at Delta College, proposed a bachelor’s degree program at SVSU that would build upon associate degree programs. Lange was appointed dean of SVSU’s School of Nursing & Allied Health Sciences in 1976. Following approval of the new program by the State Board of Nursing, the State Legislature and Governor William Milliken, the program was authorized and later became the first academic program at SVSU to receive specialized accreditation.

Lange also helped create a Master of Science in Nursing program, ratified by the faculty in 1987, as well as an Occupational Therapy program, which was approved by the Board of Control in 1992 and received specialized program accreditation three years later. After stepping down from her post as dean in 1996, Lange served as interim director for faculty support and sponsored programs and as associate vice president for academic affairs before her death in 1999.

Months before her passing that summer, the Board of Control authorized renaming the nursing college for Lange—the only one at SVSU named for an individual. Gilbertson lauded Lange’s contributions to the university, asserting that: “Crystal’s name should be an inspiration to all those students and others who will benefit from her life and her work.”32

This spirit and commitment has consistently emphasized community engagement. When Lange came to SVSU, she brought along her friend and colleague, Janalou Blecke.

For nearly four decades, Blecke called SVSU home, serving as a nursing professor, as assistant dean under Lange during the 1990s, and eventually as dean of the college beginning in 2003. As dean, she expanded the size of the college, bringing in kinesiology and social work, which previously were part of the College of Education and the College of Arts & Behavioral Sciences, respectively. She redefined the meaning of “health sciences” as reflected in a revised name for the college: Health & Human Services. Following her retirement in 2010, Blecke remained in the college as an instructor.

Blecke shared Lange’s support of community relationships. In fact, she had long believed that working with the public was a vital part of healthcare education. Doing so would create the practical workplace experience Lange so passionately advocated. “Crystal was always telling students that they ‘need to stretch,’” Blecke said, “and this meant that students should challenge themselves, and working in the community was one way to do that.” The approach may help account for the high concentration of SVSU graduates employed in mid-Michigan nursing.33

The Crystal M. Lange College of Health & Human Services has done much to prepare its graduates for an extremely dynamic workplace while simultaneously responding to community needs. In 1993, SVSU’s nursing college participated with its counterpart at Michigan State University and local health care agencies in a five-year Kellogg Foundation project that developed a model for the best practices in educating health professionals in how to meet the needs of their communities.34

The university’s nursing college is named for Crystal M. Lange, who served from 1976 until her death in 1999, and is credited with establishing SVSU’s B.S.N. and M.S.N. programs.