TORRINGTON – Nursing Program Director Suzy Delger says goodbye to Eastern Wyoming College (EWC) after working at the college since 2014.
Delger was hired by former Associate Vice President for Outreach and Learning Mike Durfee at EWC to start a brand-new nursing program at the college.
“Mike Durfee talked me into starting this brand-new Nursing Program,” Delger said. “There had not been a new Nursing Program for over 30 years.”
Delger said she decided to say yes to Durfee even though she was living in Casper and would have to commute 50 miles to and from the Douglas campus every single day. She put 100 miles on her car every single day for seven years so she could launch and oversee the new program.
Before working at EWC Delger spent 46 years as a registered nurse. During her time in nursing, Delger began as a public health nurse before attending the master’s program at the University of Wyoming in 1983. She was the second person to ever graduate from their nurse practitioner program.
After graduating, Delger was hired at Central Wyoming College where she worked for one year before getting married to her husband Stephen and moving to Casper where she did some public health work.
Delger then taught at the University of Wyoming nursing program in Casper for nine years before becoming the Nursing Coordinator for the Natrona County School District for 19 years.
When Delger launched the program, the biggest struggle she encountered was going through the process of getting the program certified and nationally accredited.
“You have to get approval from the Wyoming State Board of Nursing,” Delger said. “The Wyoming State Board of Nursing does not require that you are nationally accredited, there are hospitals that will not hire you unless you have graduated from a nationally accredited program.”
When EWC President, Dr. Lesley Travers came on board, she wanted the nursing program to host one of the programs on the Torrington campus. At the time, the nursing program was only offered at the Douglas campus.
Currently, EWC offers three different times for the nursing program. There’s a morning and night program at the Douglas campus and only a nighttime program offered at the main campus in Torrington. They again had to go through the accreditation process once the night program was offered in Torrington.
“EWC is the only one in the region that is nationally accredited,” Delger said. “Which is huge for getting your license once you pass your board exams and do all of that.”
Delger was responsible for doing all of the administrative work for the Nursing Program, such as hiring faculty, applying for accreditations and admitting prospective students into the program.
With the EWC Nursing Program being so small, Delger said it’s basically like getting a private nursing education with class sizes at 16 students during the day and just eight students for the nighttime program.
“Our goal is to educate nurses to stay in small critical access hospitals,” Delger said. “Now, most of them don’t, but the fact is, they may come to Casper or go to Scottsbluff for a year or two, but our goal really is to get them to stay in these small community hospitals, because they’re so hard to staff.”
Delger said one of her biggest goals in starting the program was to keep people in these smaller communities to work at their hospitals. She also said Memorial Hospital in Converse County and Banner Health here in Torrington have been big supporters of the nursing program.
Now that Delger is retired, she is looking forward to spending time with her family and traveling. She retired on May 20 and on June 1, Delger and her husband Stephen purchased one-way tickets to Nashville and spent three weeks exploring the south.
Delger is also looking forward to spending time with her kids and grandkids. One of her daughters, Dana Delger-Harris lives in Sweden with her husband Daniel and their son Felix. Delger said her and Stephen facetime with Felix every day and are excited to go visit him once travel is open again.
Dana went to college at New York University (NYU) and then attended Columbia Law School. She has done a lot of work with the Innocence Project and was even featured in their Netflix documentary show.
Delger said Dana’s area of expertise is bite mark work and how it’s a flawed science that is used to convict innocent people of crimes they didn’t commit.
Her other daughter, Ally Barkell lives in Casper with her husband Josh and their two children Brydger and Barrett.
“Our life really revolves around our grandkids right now,” Delger said. “They are the most important things in our life.”
Delger also said she and Stephen have a cabin up on Casper Mountain and they plan to go there every day and they also want to do more traveling.
One of the things Delger wanted people in the community to know, is how special of a place EWC is to her and her husband. They loved supporting all the various sports teams at the college and working with other faculty and staff members.
“I love everything about EWC because it’s so personal,” Delger said. “It’s so small, that is the asset. You know, it’s not a huge university, it’s not even a huge community college, it’s a very small community College.”
“Those professors and those teachers, everybody there, they are there for one reason and one reason only, it’s for the students,” Delger said. “You don’t get to see that very often. I love Eastern Wyoming College.”
