"How many future nurses do we have in the room?" asked Tom Stritikus, President of Fort Lewis College, during a ceremony to honor the very first class of the CU Nursing Fort Lewis College Collaborative.
Stritikus' question was met with loud cheers from the students.
The future nurses were being honored during a celebration for the revamping of Skyhawk Hall, a $2.9 million state-of-the-art nursing training facility that is expected to be ready by June 2025.
Maggie La Rose, Director of Nursing at Fort Lewis College, says the collaboration between Fort Lewis College and the University of Colorado College of Nursing at Anschutz Medical Campus is aimed at diversifying nurses in the healthcare field.
"Our goal is increasing representation across the board. So for nursing, it really isn't a very diverse workforce, and so really research after research has proved that we are a really trusted profession and it's important for that trust for us to have diversity, it improves patient outcomes," she said.
"And so that diversity is a lot of different things, but essentially trying to match our nurses to what the overall population is so that we can better serve our patients."
The 5000-square-foot renovation will include three different teaching environments, a homelike setting, a clinical setting, and a simulation lab with three high-definition mannequins.
This past fall, Fort Lewis College welcomed the first cohort of 24 potential nurses.
Students who complete their four-year degree on the Fort Lewis College campus will then receive their final degrees from CU. La Rose says degrees will be jointly branded, referencing the rural and Indigenous health program at Fort Lewis College.
Megan Grush is a first-year student at Fort Lewis College and is in the inaugural cohort program. A member of the Tlingit Tribe from the Pacific Northwest, she's excited to lead the way for other students to follow.
"(We're) the older siblings of this program, we're the guinea pigs. Things are getting tested out on us and it's a good way to learn what's going to work and what isn't going to work these first years so that those that come after us can succeed more based off of what we were able to figure out, what was not working," she said.
This collaboration has been over ten years in the making and both institutions say they are committed to serving underrepresented and Indigenous students. In 2018, the US Government Accountability Office studied employment data from Indian Health Services showing that there are not enough healthcare providers in the IHS service area to provide quality and timely healthcare to Indigenous people.
The first graduating class for this program will be in 2028.
Copyright 2024 KSUT Tribal Radio. For more information visit KSUT Tribal Radio.
That story was shared with us via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.