WMCC Nursing Graduates Have What It Takes
Katharine Eneguess, President of White Mountains Community CollegeWe like to talk in broad terms about the impact White Mountains Community College makes on the economic and social health of the region, but the students who pass through our hallways, sit in our classrooms, and then take their knowledge out into the community make an impact on people's lives on a much more individualized, personal scale that is just as meaningful and important. This is most true in our nursing program.
On May 13, at the Cabot Inn in Lancaster, 37 students of the senior nursing class will be pinned, receiving the physical representation of their entry into the nursing profession. Two years ago these students entered our hallways, each with a different degree of apprehension. Would they be able to handle the course load? Could they juggle the other parts of their lives, the responsibilities of family, work, and community along with studying? Could they cut it academically? Do they have what it takes to reassure those they would be serving that they were competent? Would they ever feel confident, like the nurses they’d come into contact with throughout their lives?
Each came with her or his own inspiration. Perhaps as children they had read a biography of Clara Barton or Florence Nightingale, perhaps a favorite aunt had dedicated her life to the profession, perhaps as children they'd been comforted by a school nurse after a playground mishap. Perhaps they had found, at some point in their life, that extra degree of caring and compassion, that extra degree of wonder about the mysterious workings of the human body and its healing power, that extra something needed to motivate them to pursue the nursing profession.
The evening of the pinning, a rite of passage from student to practicing nurse, will be capped with a dinner with family and friends, the very same people who supported the new nurses during their education and training. Those family and friends will, just a few days later, watch these same students in the graduation procession with the rest of the White Mountains Community College's Class of 2008.
The new graduates will find their services very much in demand. Much has been written about that demand, the huge numbers of practicing nurses who will age out of the system (i.e. retire) in the coming years, leaving a vacuum for the next generations of nurses to fill.
Those who earn an Associate Degree in Nursing from us are very much in demand and are more than adequately prepared to take the NCLEX RN licensing exam, the nursing board that allows them to work as a RN. Even before getting to that level, though, they can take the LPN boards between their first and second year of the two-year program and be qualified to work as a LPN.
On May 13 the 37 senior nursing students will wear white lab coats, coats which represent the traditional starched white uniform of the nursing profession, as they participate in the candle lighting ceremony, the pinning and as they recite the Florence Nightingale Pledge.
We take pride, here at White Mountains Community College, in our contributions to the region, both economically and socially, but our accomplishments can't hold a candle to the accomplishments, and to the future contributions, of our graduates who in small ways make big impacts.
Back to News List5/11/2008
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