Accomplishments A State Award Winner Summer Holland of Benton was recognized by the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) as the 2013 New Horizon Staff Award recipient. Holland is an administrative assistant for the advising center at West Kentucky Community and Technical College. Holland was among 50 KCTCS faculty and staff recognized for their May 2013 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington. A committee of her peers chose Holland for the statewide honor. She received $1,000 to be used for the professional development experience of her choice. Deborah Smith, director of advising and assessment, was nominated by WKCTC in the faculty category and Jennifer Strout, a business affairs specialist, was nominated in the administrative staff category.
New Multidisciplinary Health Simulation Center
A New Tradition
Nursing and health care students receive hands-on, clinical experience by working in area hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities. The Multidisciplinary Health Simulation Center at West Kentucky Community and Technical College provides realistic health care experiences.
WKCTC colleagues Debbie Smith, Dr. Renea Akin, Sherry Anderson, and Sandra Tucker coauthored a chapter for the book, Academic Advising: The Key to Student Success, by Terry O’Banion, president emeritus of the League for Innovation in the Community College. In April 2013, Smith presented with Terry O’Banion, one of the nation’s leading experts on the learning college, at the American Association of Community College’s annual convention in
The simulation center was funded in part by the Aspen Institute Prize for Community College Excellence awarded to WKCTC in 2011. Completed in October 2012, the center is located in WKCTC’s Allied Health Building and includes six bed stations that house
Award in October 2013 for her innovative and outstanding work in advising at WKCTC.
two children, a birthing mother, a full-term newborn, and one 26-week premature infant. In addition, the center has a respiratory ventilator, digital radiography portable chest X-ray machine, diagnostic sonography imaging machines for obstetrics, electronic medication dispensing equipment, bedside electronic documentation system, bedside monitoring, and other technology currently used in health care delivery in the region.
Debbie Smith
Jennifer Strout
Summer Holland
Megan Dotson, WKCTC’s transitional education reading program coordinator, received the Phelps
excellence, and reward competence in teaching in the Liberal Arts and Sciences disciplines. Dotson has been with the faculty since 2010. A Murray State University graduate, Dotson was instrumental in redesigning the College’s developmental reading program.
“The simulation center replicates real-life scenarios in a risk free, supportive environment where the complexity of quality patient care can be created,
Megan Dotson
master’s degree from Murray State University and is currently working on his doctorate from the into student study skills and reading while also reducing cost by moving the radiography program to digital textbooks. 16
In addition to lifelike mannequins that are able to illustrate a variety of bodily functions, the center includes a control room where instructors can watch students and create individualized responses.
WEST KENTUCKY COMMUNITY & TECHNICAL COLLEGE
WKCTC has been using simulation technology for several years in its health care programs, but the new lab allows more than 300 students each year to utilize the center in a variety of areas including surgical technology, radiography, diagnostic sonography, physical therapy assistant, respiratory care, pharmacy technician, and nursing.
physiological changes just as they would occur in real patients.”
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PAGE 11 HIGHLIGHTS OF 2012–2013