Not long after Hurricane Ike passed
over Galveston Island, administrators at
the UTMB School of Nursing realized
their disaster recovery plan needed
updating.
"The playbook that we had was
totally inadequate," said Patricia
"Trish" Richard, associate dean for
undergraduate programs and education
technology. "It did not have the level of
detail that we needed it to have."
By Tuesday, Sept. 16, three days after
the storm had passed, Dean Pamela
G. Watson returned to campus,
setting up a temporary office in the
Administration Building because the
School of Nursing/School of Health
Professions building was uninhabitable
at the time.
"I found that a very small amount of
water had come in," she said. "There
wasn’t even a water line but having
sat there since Saturday without air
conditioning it was a sludge, and the
air quality was so bad you just couldn’t
breathe."
Watson estimated damages to the
building at $500,000.
Many decisions were made during that
first week after the storm, not the least
of which was setting Oct. 1 as the date
to restart classes.
Each of the academic nursing
programs—baccalaureate, master’s
and doctoral—faced different
challenges. The master’s program was
the quickest to get up and running
because it is largely Web-based.
However, that didn’t make it easy.
"How much stuff was sitting on the
School of Nursing server on campus
and, therefore, was not available?"
|
asked Kathryn "Kate" Fiandt, associate
dean for graduate programs and clinical
affairs. "I always had the idea that
if it’s in cyberspace, then it’s sitting
out there on some server in Austin or
somewhere."
Faculty in the baccalaureate program
met at Clear Lake Regional Medical
Center to plan their recovery.
Institutions throughout the Galveston-
Houston region offered their support.
For example, Alvin Community
College offered use of its patient
simulation laboratories.
Many of the undergraduates who were
placed throughout the region were able
to continue their clinical rotations and
some hospitals offered to extend the
rotation so students could make up for
days missed because of Ike.
Unlike the other nursing programs, the
doctoral program is based on campus
and has little Web presence. Alice Hill,
director of the program, credited the
doctoral faculty with putting things
back together.
"All I had to say was, ‘Here’s what we
need to get things going,’" Hill said.
"The faculty members set up their own
things at Clear Lake library and got it
done. I will always remember the way
we rallied around one another and the
cooperation that we had."
Other adjustments had to be made
to make up for lost time, including
condensing some course content and
holding classes for three days during
Thanksgiving week.
Many students left their books behind
when they evacuated, compounding
the problems they faced when they
returned to Galveston. |
"Bonnie Webster contacted the
publishers and got the publishers to
donate books back," said Ernestine
"Tina" Cuellar, interim associate dean
for student affairs and admissions.
Where books weren’t replaced,
publishers provided access codes to
online materials.
Former employers even pitched in.
When Fiandt realized her lectures,
which she kept online, were
unavailable, she spoke with her former
dean at the University of Nebraska.
"In 24 hours, they had given me
access to every lecture I ever did at
Nebraska," she said. She sent links to
her students.
Only three of 574 students decided not
to return to school following the storm,
one each in the BSN, master’s and
doctoral programs. Prospective students
who planned to start classes during the
spring semester anxiously deluged the
deans with e-mail.
Looking toward the future, Watson
expects permanent changes in the way
that UTMB educates nursing students.
"It’s really going to change forever
how we make clinical placements
because, if the hospital has only 200
beds and we don’t have psychiatric
patients and we don’t have children,
a lot of the placements will be at the
Texas Medical Center in Houston,"
she said. "I believe that, looking
forward, it’s likely that UTMB will
have two campuses—Victory Lakes
and Galveston Island—and the kind
of patients we see and their health
care problems will be different in both
areas. And I also believe that that will
enrich our students’ education." |
