2010: A Year of Celebration

By Deborah Lilly and Kim Walker

During a year when budgets around the world tightened, Anderson University continued to provide the best educational opportunities to students — with a little help from alumni and friends. Thanks to gifts from local corporate partners Saint John’s Health System and Community Hospital-Anderson Foundation, the School of Nursing offers one of the most technologically advanced programs in the state. With the gift of rare and collectible books by Elizabeth York and her husband, James, the university hosted its first ever Elizabeth York Children’s Literature Festival. The daylong event featured speakers representing children’s literature and rare-book experts and welcomed guests to the York collection and reading room. The campus itself received a makeover with the renovation of Fifth Street, making the university’s busiest pedestrian crossing safer for everyone.

According to Robert Coffman, vice president for advancement at AU, despite the incredible dip in the economy, donors continue to make major gifts to the university. Since the downturn in 2008, the university has added a total of $15 million in donations and commitments to the campaign goal, making the total accumulation to date almost $95 million.

Well over $10 million of gifts received have been added to the endowment fund alone. From the beginning of the capital campaign, the university hoped to secure commitments of  $25 million to its endowment fund. Coffman explains that a large part of the still outstanding commitments to the campaign have been earmarked for the endowment, many coming from donor estate plans.

“We knew all along that this would be the hardest part of the goal to achieve,” says Coffman. “Raising funds for an endowment is tough. There is nothing to see and feel like a gift for a building. And gifts to student aid go in and come right out to help students. Endowment gifts, on the other hand, really build the long-term strength of the institution and generate funds in perpetuity for student aid or to support new or existing programs, whatever they may be.”

The university did benefit from a few more tangible gifts in 2009. In the academic realm, educators have faced the age-old dilemma of how to bridge the gap between theory and application, between what is learned in the classroom and how it is applied to the working environment. For nursing students who quickly enter a workforce where critical thinking and quick judgment calls are routine, practices that bridge the gap are evermore critical. Fortunately, through recent local hospitals’ donations of two simulated technologies, SimMan and Pyxis MedStation, the gap between theory and application has significantly narrowed for AU School of Nursing students.

SimMan, donated by Saint John’s Health System, is a portable, simulated man with realistic anatomy and clinical functionality. In lay terms, that means SimMan is a high-tech interactive mannequin that has bodily functions such as sweating, eye dilation, a pulse, coughs, even internal gurgling noises. SimMan has the ability to respond to nursing procedures by being able to do such things as bleed at multiple sites or go into respiratory distress.

Basically, “He does everything humans do, but walk,” says Karen Williams, dean of the School of Nursing.

That SimMan is so realistic and malleable affords students a platform to practice in a simulated, safe environment before heading to the nursing floor. SimMan runs electronically off a Web site and comes with built-in learning scenarios for instructional purposes. Instructors can also create their own scenarios to correspond with teaching objectives.

“He’s invaluable as a teaching instrument,” says Williams. “SimMan affords the opportunity to practice an endless range of nursing skills in a controlled environment.”

Examples of skills practiced range from the basic to the more detailed, according to Williams. For instance, students can practice broad skills such as using defibrillators, running an EKG, or starting an IV. They can also focus on targeted systems, such as the study of endocrine disorders like diabetes, by practicing administering insulin and blood sugar levels respond accordingly.

Just like a real man, SimMan has his own apartment, located in the new Saint John’s Center for Clinical Excellence in the School of Nursing. While SimMan currently has the place to himself, his presence represents only one aspect of the center’s mentoring partnership.

“It’s ongoing,” says Marlene Carey, vice president of corporate communications and foundation at Saint John’s, of the center’s purpose. “It’s a way to collaborate and mentor the next generation of nurses.”

One such partnership program intertwined with the center, according to Carey, is a newly established nursing mentorship program linking a tenured Saint John’s nurse to an AU nursing student.

“The first year of work is so critical in deciding whether you fit in, whether you feel comfortable in the place you have chosen,” says Tom VanOsdol, president of Saint. John’s. “Having a seasoned nurse to ask questions that you might not be comfortable to ask anyone else can provide the confidence and assurance needed to make the transition into the first year of work a satisfying one.”

Carey, however, sees the partnership as having even broader value. She says Saint John’s Health System, as a ministry of St. Vincent Health and member of Ascension Health, is the nation’s largest Catholic health-care system, so a partnership with Saint John’s and their technologies such as SimMan allows for the possibility of broader exposure and understanding of how other health-care systems work throughout the United States.

While SimMan offers a model of the human anatomy for practice, a second donation offers AU nursing students practice dispensing medicines for human consumption. Via the Pyxis MedStation system, donated through a Community Hospital/Community Foundation partnership, AU students now have a second technology that can alleviate one of the foremost anxieties associated with both the novice and tenured nurse alike.

The Pyxis MedStation is an automated medication dispensing system, or as Bob Tiernan, director of pharmacy at Community Hospital-Anderson, calls it, a “Drug ATM.” It looks like a large filing drawer with tiny cubicles, called CUBIES that house individual patient medications. Each CUBIE has an embedded pocket memory chip that can be programmed with specific patient/medication data.
One of the system’s main advantages is safety.

“Regulations require all medications to be secure,” explains Tiernan. “There has to be accountability and proper dispension so that medications don’t just walk off.”

Health professionals accessing medications first have to identify themselves via a fingerprint, followed by a password, to create a record of entry to assure accountability. The system also has warnings about each medication and computerized information about each drug. Another check and balance built into the system includes questions asked concerning the targeted medication, which answered leads to the opening of only one drawer.

The targeted release of only one medication drawer contrasts sharply with the medication distribution setup prior to Pyxis implementation, in which health-care professionals had to search cabinets lined with boxes or shelves of medications to locate the proper one, according to Tiernan.

Beth Tharp, vice president of patient care services at Community Hospital-Anderson, says experience on the modern, automated drug dispensing system is invaluable to nursing students from both an applied and theoretical standpoint.

“Understanding the safety element is so important. We’re not necessarily dealing with over-the-counter drugs. In many cases we are dealing with drugs that patients can only get at a hospital.” Training with Pyxis teaches students about safety before they start on the nursing floor.

The experience also goes a long way toward alleviating one of the student’s greatest concerns about practicing nursing. Each year Tharp gives her nursing students a survey to list their top fears about working in the field. The top of the list: errors, especially medication errors.

That medication errors are on the minds of novice nurses comes as no surprise. There has been much news in the media concerning travesties associated with hospital medical errors; of note is the 2006 deaths of the babies at an Indianapolis hospital who were given adult doses of a blood thinner. The Pyxis MedStation is designed to help avoid the occurrence of such medical errors through checks and balances and accountability measures.

Keith Trent, vice president and chief foundation officer at Community Hospital-Anderson, says the hospital benefits as much as students by practicing on the Pyxis system.

“It (Pyxis) is a way to strengthen the partnership between the School of Nursing and the hospital. There is a dual benefit in that students get to learn on state-of-the-art equipment that is used in the hospital, and that in turn, allows AU students who come to work for Community the knowledge and comfortableness needed to make a smooth transition.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Anderson University to provide this system,” says Bill VanNess, M.D., president and CEO of Community Hospital-Anderson. “Investing in the education of our future nurses benefits the entire health-care community, and ultimately, our patients, as we send more prepared nurses into the workforce.”

Though they are different applications, Pyxis and SimMan are giving AU nursing students real-life opportunities and changing the face of the School of Nursing at AU. Another gift that has the potential to create great opportunities at AU is the York children’s and rare-book collection (see Signatures, summer 2009) and the annual children’s literature festival.

The first annual Elizabeth York Children’s Literature Festival in early October attracted book-lovers from across the country and celebrated a subject Elizabeth and James York are passionate about: books.

“Elizabeth York has loved children's books throughout a rich lifetime as an avid reader and collector,” explains Edwards. “She has inspired us to bring together this love of books, reading, and children into an annual festival. The [York] collection is a marvelous legacy for children, children’s authors and illustrators, and teachers.”

The first annual event featured speakers from children’s book illustrators and authors to rare-book dealers and included the dedication of the York rare-book and children’s book collection and its accompanying reading room. Rob Hittel spoke about the gems of the collection and even encouraged book collecting among audience members. He captured the magic of book collecting by saying, “If you read a book as a child and it meant something to you, it still means something to you 30 years later.”
Beth (Newberry) Backus BA ’72 joined her sister, Jill (Newberry) Dickerson BA ’68, at the festival. Backus, of Noblesville, Ind., is a retired school librarian. “I love books and have always been an avid reader,” she says. She was intrigued with the event upon hearing about the York donation of books to the AU library. She was thrilled to not only see but actually touch books by Beatrix Potter from Potter’s own era.

Children’s literature transcends classifications that divide people, says Backus. “The York Children’s Literature Festival celebrates not only the York collection but the value of literature and reading in the lives of children.”

As children’s author Valiska Gregory said during her presentation at the festival, “Every time you bring a book and a child together, you are helping to create our collective future.”

With the success of the first festival, plans are already in place for next fall. According to Janet Brewer, director of the library at AU, the next festival is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010.

“When you do something this big for the first time, it’s always scary,” says Brewer. “But it all went so well.” And the library staff knows they can count on the continued support of other people on campus, such as the Office of Development, the Physical Plant Department, the Office of Conference and Performance Events, and the campus bookstore, to name a few.

Overall, comments from those attending the first event were favorable.

“People found the sessions very stimulating and thought-provoking,” says Brewer. The event will continue to follow the same format of speakers representing rare-book dealers, authors, and illustrators. Books from the York collection will be available for browsing in the York Reading Room in the library.

Brewer says the festival will change the way books are sold at the event. At the second annual event, the bookstore will manage the book-selling tables, allowing customers to pay with debit and credit cards.

“We think as time goes by the York collection and annual festival will become a very important distinctive of Anderson University and greatly enhance the reputation of the institution,” adds Coffman.

Along with donations coming in from alumni and friends during 2009, the university also benefited from a $2 million grant to renovate Fifth Street. In the 1990s, the campus and the city worked together to renovate University Boulevard, condensing traffic lanes from four to two and creating a median in the middle for pedestrian safety.

That venture, according to Joe Royer, director of facilities and the physical plant at AU, got the university to think about what could be done for pedestrian safety on Fifth Street in front of Decker and Hardacre halls and Reardon Auditorium. The funding, however, didn’t come until more recently.

The project began the Monday after graduation in May and lasted through the end of September. According to Royer, the renovation involved reconfiguring the street to again accommodate two lanes of traffic and a safety median for pedestrians. In some spots, that meant the street had to be widened; in others, it was made narrower. Work crews updated pedestrian crossings and easements and added street lighting. The street in front of Hardacre and Decker halls are scored; tires from vehicles traveling along the street are now audible, alerting pedestrians to oncoming traffic.

Because of the renovations to Fifth Street, on-street parking was removed. Royer explained that the grant allowed for the replacement of those nearly 60 spots by funding the expansion of the parking lot east of Hardacre Hall.

Even with the activity on campus, AU continues to be fully aware of the financial crisis that not only the country is feeling but also individual households. Anderson University students from Indiana faced financial crisis when the state announced cutbacks in state aid to college students shortly before the start of the 2009-10 academic year. The university stepped up and reached out to friends and alumni with an urgent appeal to help students bridge this newly developed financial gap.

“We present the need, and we find ways for it to work for our donors,” explains Edwards. And donors did respond, helping hundreds of students coming to AU this year.

“The current worldwide economic downturn has certainly affected Anderson University just as it has affected virtually all institutions across the country,” says Coffman. “That tends to manifest itself in a significant way in the pace of commitments for major capital projects.”

Coffman added that while the dollar amount of gifts has decreased during the recession, the number of gifts coming into the university has held steady. “We see that as an extremely positive sign,” he says.

“We are greatly encouraged that all of our key donors have reaffirmed their intention to honor their commitments when the economic recovery allows them to do so. Many of them — and others — have expressed a strong desire to do even more when their personal circumstances permit.”

In light of the impact of the economy and the strong evidence of continuing support for the mission of the institution, the Anderson University Board of Trustees voted unanimously to extend the Dreams. Discovery. Direction. campaign to Dec. 31, 2011. “This will give our donors additional time to benefit from economic recovery and fulfill their giving objectives and let us vigorously pursue our goal of $110 million,” says Coffman.

Edwards adds, “We serve in circumstances that we do not control. The only thing we can control is to envision what can be and build relationships where that vision can be shared.” With this philosophy and hope for continued support from friends and alumni, the Dreams. Discovery. Direction. campaign marches on.