“When you raise the bar, people will rise to the bar.” —Ann Chester, HSTA Founder rr
“You pick the kids with the potential who wouldn’t ordinarily go to college and then you show them that they can do it,” said Ann Chester, PhD, HSTA founder and WVU associate vice president for social justice. The numbers are impressive: 96 percent of HSTA students go on to college, and 92 percent stay in the state after earning their degrees. The eight HSTA graduates who live and work in Webster Springs are providing a level of healthcare that many in the community once feared would only be found hours away. When Webster County Memorial Hospital was built 60 years ago, the community was booming with the coal and timber industries. But the boom went bust, and the jobs left
Ann Chester, HSTA Founder, WVU associate vice president for social justice
Cathy Morton McSwain, Webster County HSTA education coordinator
town. The hospital nearly closed. “Now we’ve grown our own healthcare providers and that’s what HSTA is about,” said Cathy Morton McSwain, MSEd, a HSTA education coordinator who lives in Webster County. “The kids have come back home, and they realize the importance of working in the hospital and keeping their community healthy. They’re the staff now, which is just wonderful.” Stephanie Hall, RN, always knew she wanted to do something in medicine. But it was her HSTA summer camp experience that sold her. While her friends were spending summer vacation sleeping in, Stephanie was thrilled to be in the cadaver lab at WVU learning anatomy. She is now a nurse at the 15-bed hospital. “Well, home is where the heart is, and most people that go away always dream of coming back. I thought what better place to start than home? I’m familiar with the patients, and I’ve been around them my whole life. I know most of the hospital staff too. It’s like a second family,” Hall said. She has even bigger plans for the future. She’s hoping to be a pediatrician some day and will be applying to medical school at WVU. “You know you can do anything you put your mind to. If you want
Carrie Henline Given and Candy Cochran spring into action to help a patient.
something so bad that you can’t go one day without thinking about it, I would say you have to go for it.” SPRING 2012 | 3