By SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post
A grant for more than $500,000 will enable Missouri Western State University to meet the needs of the area healthcare workforce.
According to Missouri Western, the state budget signed by Gov. Mike Parson includes $557,744 for Missouri Western through the Missouri Department of Higher Education’s MoExcels workforce initiative. The funding will be matched locally with donations from Mosaic Life Care, Mosaic Auxiliary, the Heartland Foundation and the Missouri Western State University Foundation.
Crystal Harris is the Associate Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Professions and Interim Dean of Professional Studies at Missouri Western.
Harris said Missouri Western worked with Mosaic and over 20 other organizations in the community to identify where their needs were.
“We just really wanted to transform things so that we were so closely aligned with the needs of the employers that we really gave our students the best experiences so that they were ready to hit the workforce, they were well informed and they knew exactly what experiences they would be doing.”
Harris said the grant which, after matching funds, totals over a million dollars will go toward enhancing classrooms and simulation lab experiences through increasing technology available.
“We’re talking about setting up real life like experiences for students so that they can practice in safe settings and develop those skills so that when they do graduate, they’ll be able to go out into the world, fully prepared,” Harris said. “We have a mannequin or simulator that breathes, it has a pulse, you can give it medications, you can hear it talk. One of the other things that we put into this grant was virtual reality glasses. Students can wear these glasses and they can actually see what’s going on inside the mannequins.”
One of the stipulations of the grant is that it must be spent within one year. Harris said, overall, the grant is going to help enhance what Missouri Western is already doing and help them meet the needs of northwest Missouri.
“I’m so excited. We’ve had such wonderful community support… we had over 20 letters of support, we had just a lot of input on what is needed and we’re going to have an advisory group that is going to help us identify what training, what simulations, what work we need to be doing that our education that we’re providing is responsive to their needs.”
The School of Nursing and Health Professions offers undergraduate and graduate programs in nursing as well as undergraduate programs in health information management, physical therapist assistant and population health management.