TORRINGTON – The Eastern Wyoming College Board of Trustees met at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon for the monthly discussion of ongoing, and future plans for both the college and community.

Present at the meeting was college president Dr. Jeffry Hawes along with board chairman Jackie Van Mark.

Also present for the presentations were vice chair Rick Vonburg, treasurer Katherine Patrick, Secretary Randy Adams, and trustees Robert Baumgartner, Doug Mercer, Kurt Sittner and Jim Willcox. 

Perhaps the most notable discussion of the evening was the outstanding recognition of the recent rise in status by the college’s nursing program, currently headed up by Nursing Director, Dr. Monica Teichert.

It should be noted the college nursing program was recently ranked as one of the top nursing programs in the state by the National Council for the State Boards of Nursing.

Dr. Teichert was given a chance to address the accomplishment, while giving gracious and much due credit to all staff and students involved with the program.

“It is an exceptional honor that I get to stand here and tell you of the glory we all have done,” Dr. Teichert said. “This has been a true effort that has taken a village. By no means is this my credit, and it has been my honor to lead this team of excellence.

“Our program was actually under review at the accreditation,” Dr. Teichert continued. “The final accreditation findings are all wins from my perspective. I know just from being a peer reviewer, it’s actually pretty hard to maintain an area of strength. The peer evaluator teams beg proponents, and like pointing out our strengths. That is a win as often times our strengths are taken off after they get to that level, and really focuses in on our fiscal funding. They felt that we had a lot of support fiscally, not just institutionally. We had zero areas of non- compliance. To some degree or another, we were granted continuing accreditations. We don’t use the word fully accredited necessarily as we were just granted continuing accreditation.”

Despite such a grand long-term achievement for the college program, Dr. Teichert was wise and humble in bringing up how for a short while, the program was nowhere near reaching the potential it certainly was capable of reaching.

“We also had a full review by our Wyoming State Board of Nursing (WSBN),” Dr. Teichert explained. “No pressure on that time frame, but we were just actually removed from being on cautionary status which is another amazing win. That we really need to celebrate. Now that we do not have cautionary status, we are fully approved by our WSBN. That was new to us within the past month. We are now fully approved and have continuing accreditation, so those are very big wins. We have also had lots of conversations about increasing our male population in our program, and making it more diverse.”

Dr. Teichert along with her attentive nursing colleagues and students were given a much-deserved round of applause by the trustee board, as well as a thoughtful and verbal sentiment from chairman Van Mark and former college President, Rick Patterson.

“I know it’s great and sexy to be a doctor,” Van Mark said as the room chuckled. “But the fact of the matter is you nurses have to have broad thinking sills, you have to have critical thinking skills and you have to remember everything. So recently I’ve been in some situations with family, and by God who are my nurses? EWC nurses. I was very proud of that, but also proud of what they did and how they handled themselves. And here they have provided, so congratulations.”

“Nursing is one of those things that is near and dear to me,” Former president Patterson quickly added. “And it has always been for personal reasons. My wife is an RN, my middle daughter is an RN and my youngest daughter is an RN. Several of them went to school right here in Wyoming. Nursing is one of the most important professions in our society. When you stop and think about it, the very first person you see when you hit this earth is a nurse. Often times the very last person you see is a nurse. Between all of that, nurses take care of us whether it be public health, or school nurses taking care of bangs and bruises. Nurses are a crucial part of our community, and Dr. Teichert has turned this thing around. This is incredible, the pass rate is incredible and nobody can beat that. This is huge, and it’s a tremendous accomplishment. All of the students have made this happen.”

The meeting would soon continue with an admonitory presentation before the Board by Torrington Police Chief, Matt Johnson.

Johnson made a calming, but valuable point in relation to a recent Sheridan shooting where a police officer tragically lost his life. According to Johnson, such a horrific heartbreak is a harsh reminder that such things can and do happen anywhere.

As such, Johnson was adamant the community must be well-prepared should such a situation ever find its way to Torrington. Additionally, Johnson presented a beneficial and modern phone response tool which gives police and emergency personnel immediate notification should an incident ever occur on college grounds.

“As we have all had some recent reminder, the one sort of reality is that we are hopeful and peripheral that this never happens in our community. We work hard to prevent that from ever happening in our community, but it might,” Johnson said. “Something like that could happen here. Last fall I became aware of some of the capabilities that are possible from the standpoint from improving communication response on school campuses. When I came back from the conference I attended, a group of us here in Torrington started doing some research and presentations to help us be better prepared. This type is a phone app where staff members of any occupation can download in any event of an active threat. When you think about the logistics of someone reporting an active threat, it becomes very clear why this is so beneficial. It’s powerful training, and one that is very impactful.”

According to chief Johnson the app is called Life Spot, and can be found on the website Lifespotapp.com for downloads as well as further information.

As Johnson further explained to the college trustees, Life Spot could efficiently provide an incredibly fast and easy signal to Torrington PD where the correct responses could be achieved, while not complicating dispatch communication.

“When you start thinking about multiple people calling 911 at the same time, we have talented staff at our communication center but we don’t have a lot of them,” Johnson explained. “We would have a very serious pinpoint that wouldn’t allow us to have an adequate response. That’s why this app is such a powerful tool. Given that we are fairly small in size, we may not be able to get into that command role until the threat is resolved. It just takes care of a whole lot of things at the same time, and it is very hard to communicate where people and injuries are. The other thing that is really important about this is we have got to train. There has got to be training that is vigorous, useful and helpful. And it needs to be reinforced through drills, and online training.”

The meeting would adjourn at 7:30 p.m. and will reconvene March 12 at 4 p.m.