Clockwise from top left: Marc McCallum shows off his official Shelby Baptist Medical Center employee ID. Cindy Nicholson is Shelby Baptist Medical Center’s director of human resources and serves as Project Search’s business liaison. Kim Bryant is Project Search’s lead job coach and is employed by The Arc of Shelby County, while Lacy Johnson, an employee of the Shelby County School System, is the Project Search teacher.
Baptist Medical Center and The Arc of Shelby County at the forefront. Cindy Nicholson, Lacy Jordan and Kim Bryant represent the main community leaders of Project Search. Nicholson is the director of human resources at Shelby Baptist Medical Center and serves as Project Search’s business liaison. Jordan is Project Search’s teacher and is employed by Shelby County School System, while Bryant is the lead job coach and an employee of The Arc of Shelby County, which works with disabled people. The three women meet monthly to discuss the nascent program: what works, what doesn’t, who is struggling or succeeding. During these conversations, they keep the end goal in mind: to have all 11 interns employed in the community by Aug. 1, 2013. ‘Why would we not do this?’ Shelby Baptist’s partnership with Project Search began in April 2012. A representative from The Arc of Shelby County approached Nicholson about having the hospital serve as the intern site for the new program. Nicholson said the organizers wanted a response within two weeks, so she approached the hospital’s leadership, who initially expressed doubt. After a visit from Project Search representatives from Ohio, Shelby Baptist Medical Center was on 18 | ShelbyLiving.com
board. “The reaction changed to ‘Why would we not do this?’ Our team was on board because that group presented to our executive team,” Nicholson recalled. “Then the question was ‘Who’s going to work with this?’ And I said, ‘I will. If I’m going to bring this in, I want to be involved.’ That’s when I got my second title as business liaison.” Nicholson went to work identifying departments she thought would be able to use interns. “Some jumped in immediately, some were a little skeptical, but they all agreed,” she said. As of March 2013, the program had 13 internship sites: administration, the women’s center, medical records, cafeteria, diagnostic center, transportation, imaging, the operating room, outpatient surgery, materials management, plant operations and security. All in a day’s work The students’ day begins at 8:30 a.m. when they arrive in the Project Search classroom. The student and their families are responsible for finding their own trasnsportation to the internship, and many use ClasTran, a bus service that serves the disabled and