Oral History Program Sally Cantwell Interviewed by Michael Thompson 25 May 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sally Cantwell Interviewed by Michael Thompson 25 May 2022 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Cantwell, Sally, an oral history by Michael Thompson, 25 May 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Sally Cantwell, conducted May 25, 2022, at the Stewart Library by Michael Thompson. Sally discusses her education and passion for nursing, her work in the College of Nursing, and her contributions to Weber. Also present is Connie Lopez. MT: Today is May 25, 2022. We are in the Stewart Library at Weber State University conducting an oral history of Sally Cantwell, who is currently the chair of the nursing department here on campus. I'm Michael Thompson. I'm conducting the interview, and the video technician is Connie Lopez. So, to start, when and where were you born? SC: I was born at McKay-Dee Hospital, Ogden, Utah, October 12, 1979. MT: Did you grow up here in Ogden? SC: I did. I grew up in North Ogden, other than a short stint: my dad went to grad school in Tucson, Arizona. Otherwise, I have lived in North Ogden or Pleasant View my entire life until I graduated from high school. MT: What high school did you graduate from? SC: Weber High in 1998. MT: What was your early life like growing up? You mentioned your dad went to grad school. SC: Yeah, I have great parents, probably the greatest. You know, you get your blessings in life. They're probably two of my greatest blessings. I have amazing parents. I had a mom that stayed home but worked occasionally where she could just to supplement our lives. My dad was an educator in the K-12 system and was an elementary school teacher. By the time I was in third grade, he was an elementary principal in Ogden City schools, and then worked through those systems for 30+ years, and the vice principal of Ogden High for a year. He has his Ph.D. and he specializes in reading programs, so he wrote the reading program for 1 the state. Either way, heavily encouraged to have a life of education. We can choose to be who we want to be, but we were certainly encouraged to be educated. MT: What made you decide to attend Weber? SC: Yeah, Weber? Isn't that funny in hindsight? I've been asked this question a couple of times throughout my career, and I, like many people in Ogden, Utah, was just like, “Oh, sure, Weber. It's right up the road.” But I was a student graduate and got a full ride at Weber and didn't even apply anywhere else. I was like, “Weber is great. Be happy to go.” My grandma was a nurse, my sister was a nurse, and I wasn't sure if that's what I was going to do yet, but I got my full ride and started my prerequisites. Then I got a wild hair in my bonnet, and a year into school I told my mom, “Mom, I'm moving to New York and I'm going to be a nanny.” She's like, “Okay, sure.” And I did at the end of that academic year. I had a job as a nanny on Long Island, New York, and I moved to New York. My parents, they've always told me I have a bit of an independent streak. I still attended Long Island University while I was out there, while I was nannying, but most of my courses were in political science. I couldn't decide if I wanted to be an attorney or a nurse or something in the medical field. I loved both areas and did a lot of pre-reqs in both, and after my year in New York, I was in January prior to deciding that I was going to return to grown-up land. My mom just said, “Just decide. College is going to be here again in the fall. What are you going to do?” My sister said, “Nursing applications are due on Friday. Just apply.” Then I said, “Okay, I'll apply. If I get in, I'll know it's what I'm supposed to do. If not, I'm going to progress and go to law school.” I applied and I got in the first time I applied in the nursing program, which was kind of a hard thing to do. I spent the 2 summer playing in Florida and worked at Disney World for a whole season and drove home, got home Saturday, and started nursing school the next week. So that was me getting into nursing school. MT: You said it was after your first year at Weber that you went? So, ‘99, 2000? SC: 1999, 2000. I lived in New York over that whole Y2K business, and then I started nursing school in August 2000. MT: Side tangent: a year later, September 11th. How did that affect you having lived in the New York area? SC: I remember exactly where I was. I was an LPN by then. A year into nursing school, you can take your PN boards and work as an LPN. Early on in my career, I realized I really liked the mental health area of nursing. I was a critical care nurse, but I decided to take up a PRN job: down the street used to be—it doesn't exist anymore actually, the Pediatric Behavioral Health Unit, and it was only pedes, it wasn't for adults. I was there for a job interview, and I got the phone call from—funny enough he's my husband now. We were not married then. He said, “Sally, have you seen the news?” I said, “No, what are you talking about?” I'm like sitting in the waiting room for a job interview, and he's like, “Find a TV,” and he's the one that told me about it, funny enough. Immediately making phone calls. I was still great friends with the family that I had nannied for and had made some good friends back there and was able to get ahold of the family. Funny enough, I had just been. I took a friend of mine back with me. He had never been to New York, and I was going back for a wedding, and we had just been in New York a couple of weeks before 9/11. So we had recently been there, in the Trade Center, because I took him everywhere. I took him to the Statue of Liberty, I took him to the World Trade Center. I took him everywhere. It was an interesting 3 moment to be like, “We were literally just standing there, like, a month ago.” Kind of wild; definitely felt more personal. I'd have a family and friends that were there and that were close. But I found out getting ready for a PN job interview at the Behavioral Health Center. It's funny. MT: How was that first year of nursing school? SC: It's funny. I told nursing students now there is nothing like it. I was a straight-A student, I think a self-proclaimed really hard worker. I'm not afraid to tackle anything. There's just something about being in nursing school that's so hard. It changes your whole life because you live and breathe your studies and your nursing cohort friends, and I got married that year, right? So much happened my first year. But it was also rewarding and amazing. It wasn't just me flipping a coin and being like, “Well, if I get in, I'll be a nurse.” It was reaffirming that I was in the right place and I loved what I did. I had been working in a care setting, and then my first PN job was in the mother-baby unit at the old McKay. I just loved holding those babies, and I was like, “No, I got the babies. You go to take care of the moms.” I loved the babies and I would maybe stay in like, women's services. But as soon as I became an RN, I was like, “This is for the birds.” If all I had to do is take care of babies, I would have loved it. But [that’s] before I became an RN and moved to the neuro high observation critical care unit and stayed in critical care most of my career. MT: So what degrees do you hold from... SC: From Weber? I have an associate degree in nursing and a general associate degree. You gotta love those two associate degrees. Then I have a B.S.N. in nursing. I have a master's degree from the University of Utah. Those other degrees are all Weber, and at the time, Weber didn't have a master's degree when I went through the master's program. Technically, it's a Master of Science in teaching 4 nursing, so it's an educator/nursing degree from the University of Utah. Then I have my Ph.D. in higher education leadership, and I went to North Central University in Arizona. MT: Okay. What was Weber like as a student? Especially the nursing program: what was it like, dynamic-wise? SC: I had a great class. Funny enough, still in my life, I know two of them really well that we went through our nursing cohort together. But you live and breathe these 30 students, four years together, and then some of us worked together on the floor, too, right? So you're studying and you're complaining and you share in your rewards and you have clinical experiences. One of the really endearing, and I think magical, things about nursing school is how close you get to your cohort because you spend so much time together. You have didactic classes, you have lab classes, you have clinical rotations, you have brand new experiences. You see the birth of a baby. You see people die, right, so you're so close to them. My class had—can I say names? Is it okay? MT: Yeah. SC: I'm like, it's a good thing. I had a cohort. Dennis Gladwell was in mine, and he was in his 50s and a super successful attorney in his life. He was coming back to school to get his nursing degree because he wanted to go on medical humanitarian missions. He was such an inspiration to be in school with, just such a different whole person than us. He had children; he had a grandchild; he had an entire career, so he gave us this beautiful perspective on life. He was so awesome. Funny enough, his nephew Charlie was in our same class, and Charlie and I worked together and we're great friends. I loved him. Then, funny enough, I live in the same neighborhood as a girl I went to school with in nursing, and we haven't seen each other in years, but it's like, “Becky!” “Sally!” So yeah, my class was amazing. 5 Something just happens and you grow close to your study group. Am I answering the question in the best way? I'm a squirrel here. That first year was time-intensive and fun and heartbreaking. Through my nursing career, we lost a faculty member to suicide, and a student, just a random crazy accident—her car, in a storm, fell in the dam and she drowned. We were kind of tied by tragedy and tied by lots of things. We had a really interesting… That was through our associate and our bachelor's program. Kind of wild. MT: That is... SC: A lot to deal with. You learn early on if you have—it's why it's so important to me to talk to nursing students in my role now about healthy coping mechanisms and having a really great individual in your life—and we call it—that you just can call and just vomit at the mouth to debrief your whole day. Whether you're appropriate or not, they don't judge you, but you've got to get it out, you know? So I think that that's so important and I have that in my life. I had my sister who's a nurse, and so we carry a lot of the same challenges and stresses, and it was just [a] great perspective. I know I was lucky that way. MT: You mentioned your sister's a nurse and your aunt... SC: My grandma. MT: Grandma. SC: I actually have an aunt that is too. MT: Is there anyone else in your family? SC: Hmm? No, I don't think so. Occupational therapy and other things, but no more nurses—no, just kidding. I have two aunts. My Aunt Karen is a nurse, too. My dad's sister, my dad's sister-in-law, my dad's mom, and then me and my sister. Funny enough, no one on my mom's side. MT: I forgot to ask, how many siblings do you have? Where are you in that? 6 SC: I'm one of five. I have an older brother, Justin, and then my sister is just 22 months older than me, Christy. Then me, and I'm the third. I am your typical middle. Then a brother, Trevor, that's just 14 months younger than me, and we're super close. Love him. Then a brother, Kip. So three brothers and one sister. We're super close. I have a great family, a super great family. MT: Did they all attend Weber? SC: My brother did for a minute, but is actually not a college graduate. My sister went to Weber's Nursing Program. She, although older than me, got her bachelor’s fairly early-on but didn't get her master’s for years and years and years. She's in a leadership position over at McKay-Dee. She's the pedes manager and a few years ago—trying to think, three or four now—I talked her into it. She got her master's in here, which was super fun because I was able to give her diploma. MT: That’s really cool. SC: Yeah. My other brother did not go here. He went to the U. My youngest brother also did not. I think he has maybe some prerequisites and gen eds and stuff, but didn't complete his degree here. MT: Okay. Outside of the degrees, what other certifications do you have? SC: I have—let's see if I can name it correctly. They call it a QPR Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention Training Certification. I'm trained in that. I have educational certificates. There’re just little things—no post-grad certificates or anything like that. I had lots of additional certificate trainings over the years, whether it's an online teaching education or… what else have I done throughout the years? I have to think about it. Lots of online training. I did research coordinating and had a certificate in being a research coordinator. I actually started school last June in marriage and family therapy. Really, mental health has become a total love of mine. Thinking that I'd get that and help Weber launch their next track in psych mental health. That was my 7 plan, and life has taken me down a different path since then. That's just on hold, but I have schooling in that, I just haven't finished that. I'm going to think of that later. I have an IT simulation certification. It's whatever I've needed to get over the years to supplement teaching. I had all my trauma nurse certification, critical care nurse certification on those, but I don't know if that matters in the grand scheme of things. That was all bedside nursing certifications. MT: Okay. And then, of course, you're a licensed nurse. SC: Yeah, I have that. I am an RN, and that is a license that stays active. That's the requirement. MT: So you finished your bachelor's, and then what did you do? Did you go right into your master's? SC: I did not, but it was pretty close. I graduated with my bachelor's, I think in the fall, like December of ‘04. Then I started my master's the next fall, August of '05. So, yeah, that's pretty close. I took some time off. MT: Where are you working? At McKay-Dee still? SC: Yep. I worked at McKay and I worked on—at that time it was still their Neuro-HOBS unit, and then they moved to the new hospital in—was it the new McKay building? I can't remember after all these years. That floor was called IMC: Intermediate Care. So we worked between immediate care, intermediate care and ICU. We crosstrained. MT: When you say the old McKay-Dee, that's when it was just across the street? SC: Across the street, yeah. We call that old McKay. It's not even there. I doubt that people would be like, “Oh, the old McKay,” because the new one had more space, right? So our unit, which was like a 12-bed unit, became a 28-bed unit, so it had to have different purposes. It couldn't stay a small Neuro-HOBS, you know, high observation as well, substance four, so it had to grow. We started taking more and 8 more patients that were not neuro patients, and now it's grown throughout the years over there. MT: So when did you first start working for Weber? SC: Spring 2006. I was in school in my master's program, and Kathy Culliton and Pam Rice were running things up here and reached out and said, “Hey, do you want to come?” I can't even remember my initial connection, but Kathy kind of was my connection forever about teaching a clinical for them. So I started in '06 as adjunct and then started teaching Pharm as adjunct, and then I came on as full-time faculty July 1 of '07. MT: Okay, and you've been teaching ever since? SC: Ever since, yes, I have. I never stopped after that spring '06. I taught at least six credit hours for them because I was working full-time at Weber, too, and I was in school, and my master's, and then I was teaching adjunct here. MT: Then was it split? I'm not sure exactly how the nursing classes are set up. Was it just the associate and bachelor’s until the master's program started? SC: Yeah. The RN BSN program, which is the bachelor's program, [were] already here at Weber. We are the tailored School of Nursing—they call it the crown jewel of stackable credentials, essentially. We've always done stackable degrees, so we've never had a generic BSN. They're already licensed and then come into our BSN program, and then get their bachelor's, and that came in the 2000s. We're actually 70 years old this year. Our Associate Degree program for nursing is kind of a big deal. MT: The mother of all nursing programs. SC: Yeah, we are now actually one of the oldest. I think we were the third in the nation to get an associate degree program or to do a diploma program. We were connected to St. Ben’s, so knowing we've grown so much is kind of an amazing 9 history just in and of itself. So yes, when I was here in school and teaching then in '06, they did not have [a] graduate program. MT: What year did the graduate program start? SC: The master's—I'll double check this date—I'm pretty sure was 2010. Somewhere in there was when the master's program started, and then it grew from there with optional tracks. The nurse practitioner—that was a master's at first, I think—in 2015, is when it joined our ranks, or 2016. Then of course we got our doctorate program and enrolled our first class there in 2019. MT: Right before the pandemic. SC: Yes, we did, and they all graduated and they passed their certification, so they did something right. We got our initial accreditation; we just went through all of that past candidacy and full accreditation and got that letter in April, so they put our accreditation back to July 1, 2020 so all graduating classes are accredited. MT: Oh, that's awesome. SC: Yeah. So you get your accreditation to your candidacy date, which was July 1, 2020, which is when I became chair. MT: Aside from teaching, did you hold other positions here at Weber? SC: I did not. I came right on as nursing faculty, as an instructor. Then in '08, I went on tenure track. I've been faculty, but I've been the associate program director, then the associate chair, and then chair. I've held different positions inside nursing, but I guess I've been in the admin role for ten years. MT: Did you have any hand in helping get the master's program here? SC: I didn't have a hand in the master’s. I was kind of involved at the time [with] the creation of the master’s. We were turning over admin roles in the associate degree program. The master’s had just happened, because you're so new, you're this faculty and you barely know up from down. It takes about three years to really be 10 like, “Hey, I know what I'm doing,” and by that time, they were already involved in bringing the master’s on board. You're preparing, and it takes a couple of years before it actually happens. So I've taught in the master’s throughout the year, I've taught in all the programs, but no, I did not. But I did have a hand in bringing the doctoral program to life. MT: What was that like? SC: So much work. You write a whole new curriculum. You have to make sure you have funding and buy-in and support structures. The accreditation process is almost unexplainable, how hard it is. You write a couple-hundred-page candidacy report. You have to justify all your clinical spots. You have to have all your syllabi prepared and ready and ahead of time and the program of study and how labs are going to be taught. I mean, it's so much work, and it was a huge team effort. I didn't lead it by any means, but I led the accreditation process, what would be established as the DNP curriculum team—certainly participated in that. That was six to eight people writing curriculum and moving things. Susan had a big hand in that, Susan Thornnack. Yeah, it was a big deal. We just got fully accredited, and that was probably four years of work that we were finally like, “Yay, we did it.” MT: So from first deciding you wanted to have the doctorate program to… SC: To completing it. MT: What other departments on campus did you have to work with for the accreditation? SC: None. I mean, nursing, we choose to collaborate and have interdisciplinary education. We didn't work with them in getting the accreditation done. Where we work together is having interdisciplinary labs with, like, MLS or having faculty from HHS teach the financial class instead of us. Essentially where that collaboration came in is asking content experts in other departments to teach a course in our 11 program, so that either already existed in their curriculum and we’re asking for it to be taught in ours, or we write something and say, “Take a look at this.” Of course, it's a team effort. We couldn't have done it without the dean's support in those types of things, but nursing, being its unique self, is to be a DMP. You have to be an RN, so you can't feed other disciplines into the doctorate program. We were kind of on our own as far as getting it going, but as far as getting it approved and through all of the political logistics: that we needed help with, not the curriculum creation. At the time, President Mortenson—Brad—was not the president, and we worked a lot with him in development and in legislative connections and navigating those channels. We couldn't have done it without him. He was awesome. Just development alone, helping get donors and scholarship funds and those types of things going. He had always sat and was supportive when we were asking for things, even just getting Weber on board with us. Getting that doctorate program, we had to convince them that it was the right thing to do, that our national guidelines and our standards required a doctorate for nurse practitioners. They're moving to that standard, and so our MSNP that we had was going to become inconsequential. We had to move to a doctorate program. We finally got them on board that this is a practice doctorate: a clinical doctorate, not a research doctorate. They still do Grade Q II projects and research and whatnot. So it took some convincing that it was the right thing to do. We had to talk to upper management. We had to make sure that, like, Northwest Accreditation would allow Weber to have a doctorate program. It took a lot of work and a lot of conversations to get it approved and then be like, “Okay, we got approval,” and we had so much work to do. 12 MT: Of course, the board of trustees would have to approve, and then state higher education. SC: We figured if we got our management on board and we had all our i’s dotted and our t's crossed and a strong why—we just had to keep repeating ourselves, saying, “We are not threatening an institutional mission. We're contributing to it.” One of the proud markers of nursing, we talk about [how we] will almost be 70 in 2023. We're in our 70th year, and we graduated the most students of any department across campus. We work our butts off. I know other people do as well, but we wouldn't fail at this. There's a reason, and we will not fail at this. We just promised them and we upheld it. Yeah, it was a lot of hard work. MT: What resistance or battles have you faced as you progress through your career? SC: It's a good question. I came on fairly young to a faculty role. I was 27 when I started here, and much like I am now, kind of a wild woman that pushes lots of boundaries and asks lots of ‘whys’ and ‘how comes’. I like to claim that I'm just a knowledge gatherer. I like to understand processes and things. When I first came on board, I had great mentors and people that totally took me under their wings. But as I navigated the university, probably one of my biggest challenges was reverse ageism. They talk about ageism, but I really had to work through the pushing aside and “Oh, what do you know?” and, “You haven't been here for more than a second.” In their eyes, what could you possibly contribute to this conversation? Just kind of political judging of “You're young, what could you possibly contribute to this conversation?” That was certainly a challenge, but I tried to operate in all my areas through the motto of, “There's always room for kindness.” I can learn something from every situation that I get myself in, and I was going to convince them they loved me. One 13 way or another, that was going to happen. I just feel like I did that throughout the years by consistency and being prepared. I essentially was told, “Oh, yeah, if you want to be a professor and tenured, you have to get your doctorate.” I was like, “Okay.” I got that fairly early-on in my career. I think I was 33 right when I got my Ph.D., and so that was like, “Well, don't tell me I can't do it. I will do it.” Some of those were just putting in my time, earning respect the right way: by preparation and consistency and reading a lot and attending conferences and publishing and doing the things that are required of a faculty member that brought me that experience. Then kind of recognizing in hindsight, I for sure was green, but green faculty bring fresh ideas. I had a hand in creating mentoring programs and inschool nursing and tenure mentoring programs, because that didn't exist for me. I was like, “Man, I had to struggle through a lot of this red tape, and it shouldn't be this hard.” So I learned about that, and it's been amazing. I've worked with such amazing individuals and have been given a lot of opportunities, and quite frankly, I had to snatch a few of those and be like, “I can do this. Just trust me, I can do this.” I was pretty young when I became the associate program director. I think I was the youngest they ever allowed to do that, and I had a one-year-old baby, which. I was like, “It's fine.” That's been our motto. “It's fine. Everything's fine.” But I loved it here, and I was always supported. Challenges are more just like opportunities to convince them that it's okay. I love change, that we've been through so much change in nursing, and I think I've adopted just a change mentality. So most of the challenges and whatnot, I would literally say reverse ageism is probably my biggest challenge I ever encountered here. It's so funny that I'm 42 to be like, “I'm so old and experienced.” At this point, I feel like I've been here for a 14 billion years. I'm in my 17th year, but the things we've accomplished in these 17 years are kind of outstanding. I mean, we grew huge graduate programs. We have our first doctorate. We've made a huge name for ourselves across the nation. We have accreditation experts. We have—I think I counted the other day—our school of nursing used to have like one doctorate-prepared nurse. We have 33 doctorateprepared faculty. That's huge. Then we have 56 faculty and then like 10 staff, I think, so we're big. We have 67 faculty and staff that work for our School of Nursing, and that's been fun to just navigate all those different personalities and the range of age we have to take care of, right? We have 20-year-olds and we have 70-yearolds that work in our department, and so that's fun. You have to change how you say things. I don’t know, that was a really long answer to that. But the truth is, it's just changed and been challenged. I think one of the other things I really had to learn and I still struggle with it a little bit, in full transparency, is just because I know the answer doesn't mean I have to give the answer. Really letting the process work itself out to give people a voice [and] to give them time to get their voice out there. Even if it's wrong, letting them go down that path and learn from it if it's not harmful. Some of those things I've had to learn throughout the years, that they don't have to be right about everything. Even if I was right, it doesn't matter. What's the growth process or the learning process? That's been awesome. MT: You mentioned ageism. Knowing that nursing traditionally is a female-dominated field, and assuming there hasn't been a lot of sexism in the field, what have you done to help promote more diversity within the program itself? SC: That's a great question. We have, on average at Weber, a great comparison to the national average of both ethnic diversity as well as gender diversity. We have some cohorts that have far more males than others, though the things we've tried to do 15 over the years change based on what we're seeing in our applicant cycles. Sometimes we're doing better at it than others based on what type of challenges are coming our way. But I think some of the things that help is having male faculty on staff. What's really interesting is most men come into nursing—this is their own verbal report. I'm not making this up—and they want to go into advanced nursing roles. They generally do not stay at the bedside. That's kind of the opposite for females. There's some interesting statistics about how many are in administrative roles, male versus female, in the national statistics. As far as promotion, we have an NSNA, and that's a student-run group that we do. [We] go around and promote and we take our honor society—that's an international one—and visit middle schools and do recruitment. We do a ton of service, and that seems to be our best way to recruit diversity into our programs: showing that we are open to it, that we want it, that we are building resources to support it. We get quite a few [people]. We have a couple from the Philippines right now. We will get international nurses. We have at least two or three a semester that we work with. Part of that growth is making sure that we have a good relationship with the international office. Two, we always have to improve online resources, whether it's tutoring services or whatever it is, because nursing seems to be its own ballgame with tutoring needs [compared to] gen eds or whatnot. That's something we work on. I would say service events and job fairs and recruitment efforts with our student groups and our societies is the best that we can do to recruit. We had a competitive application process, so no matter what the most qualified student gets in, we do give a percentage to military and diversity—not a full point, but partial points to try to increase that, because we don't want it to be the only reason that 16 they became more qualified than someone else. We get the highest-qualified students, and then if it gives them the nudge, great. That's how we promote it. We have lots of talks about it all the time. The other thing we do that's super awesome is we have partnerships with our tech colleges, and we probably have the longest-standing relationships with our tech partners. We partner with Bridgerland in Logan, Ogden-Weber here in Ogden, and then Davis Tech in Davis County. That's a way that we increase our efforts, because often the Ogden-Weber population that's applying there, we get a better diverse population, interestingly, than applies there. I don't know if you guys know this. Without reapplying or anything, we take their PNs through our program, both our RN and RN-to-BSN, without reapplication. So as long as they got in meeting requirements, they graduate through our program. That's another great way that we have found that increases our diversity is by our partnerships. MT: What does a typical semester look like for you? SC: For me? I mean, it's changed throughout the years. It went from full-time, 12-credithour faculty teaching mode where it's just teaching in labs and sim and clinical and a mixture of that and lecture, to—I'm actually full-time release as a chair because we're huge. We essentially are the size of a college. I have three directors and multiple clinical coordinators, and it’s silly, but I still teach. My job right now is to take care of my directors, which in turn, they take care of the faculty, and then they help take care of all the students. A typical semester for me is big opening meetings. We generally [have a] summer annual retreat with all of our core leadership positions, determine a theme for the year, and we introduce that theme and set challenges for our faculty and try to set the mood for success. Last year was the “Year of the Giver”, and there's this 17 awesome book called The Go Giver. Everyone should read it. It's fantastic. It's really about business, but about leadership and principles. We bought everyone the book and put together this cute thing, and then throughout the year do book club moments. There's five rules of success in the book, so we'll say, “We’d love to hear from some of you. How are you meeting the third rule?” So that's a semester for me: setting challenges, talking to people, dealing with anything that they can't deal with at a program level, and working with all of the leadership at the college level. Then I still teach. Last fall, I taught the Doctorate Leadership class, and then in the spring I taught the Master’s Retaining a Qualified Workforce. So I'm still teaching. I teach a mental health class; we do trainings. I’m at that 360-degree level of making sure everything's taken care of, and we're still strategic planning, and I'm proposing things to the provost for enrollment initiatives. I sit on committees and it's just busy. It's fine. I love the chairs and HP and Yas and Ken. They're awesome. We have a great team and lots of brainstorming, and we have monthly meetings, and I have weekly meetings with my admin team, and it's just a big ship to steer. Then [I] meet with donors and go to the banquets. That's the normal semester. It's busy, but it's awesome. MT: That is awesome. How did your department change because of the pandemic? SC: Good question. The pandemic: it went from disbelief that it was happening, like, “Is this really freaking happening?” right to, “Oh, this is happening, and what are we going to do about it?” Our faculty were amazing. The good news is we've always, in most of our programs, have a bit of a hybrid feel to them anyways, where we utilize Canvas in every single course. It's not even a question. Every course is loaded in Canvas, and all assignments are submitted there. We already had a really strong WSU Online hold of our curriculum. Regardless if the class was even 100% face-toface, everything was turned in in Canvas, and everything in the course was 18 provided to students that way. That was super helpful that we already were functioning WSU online platforms. How it impacted our faculty: we had this group of faculty that did this amazing thing in the associate’s degree program and immediately connected with CATS in I.T. and recorded our own videos for skills and set that Best Practice Standard for students. Then we changed our lab kits that were sent to students: they had [to] come pick them up in a rotation rate for the standards of distance and whatnot. So the way we taught our labs totally changed the curriculum for that change. We got some CARES funding to support that. A lot more quality in recording equipment and whatnot on people's laptops, and improved space and recording things in our labs. That's what we pushed for to come back quickly, our lab rotations, because that's hard to teach students to be taking care of patients. You never even saw them touch a mannequin or whatnot, right? At the same time, we were kicked out of our clinical rotations, so we had a group of students that weren't touching people. They didn't have any patient care. That just doesn't fly in a hands-on program, so that was a huge impact for us. We had to go to the drawing table and be like, “How are we going to ensure that these students are meeting our graduation outcomes without ever touching a person?” Luckily for us, that never came to pass. We didn't graduate a cohort that didn't go to clinical, so that was nice. But it impacted labs, big-time. [On] our end, we had programs that essentially went from hybrid to totally online. Our RN to BS was hybrid and went totally online. It was weird not to have a footprint on campus because we are such a lively bunch that is used to being together and collaborating together and having students roaming the halls and constantly in lab and sim. It was a huge, huge impact for us. 19 I was so impressed with faculty and the creative approach. We brought in good electronic teaching platform systems that allowed for decision-making, some of those types of things that didn't make our curriculum quality suffer. We just had to change how we taught it, and it had to happen really fast. We're grounded by [the] end of March, April-ish, and we had a graduating class in April, and so they weren't too impacted. But that summer cohort: we had Davis Tech that was completely online, so they were like our pilot program of applying these new online initiatives and making sure that we could evaluate their learning and do all of that. That was big, and then it worked out great, and our students’ pass rates stayed. Big impact for that. It's forever changed. It gave us a new challenge on how we were putting students through clinical rotation. It made us say, “Do we need this many hours in lab?” Made us relook our whole curriculum. “Does this class have to be taught faceto-face?” It was just kind of interesting, the impact it had. That challenge of how many people were able to work from home, we had to think about that too. “Can this class meet the needs of the students, being completely taught online?” That is a forever permanent change in a lot of our curriculum. Some classes went completely online that never had been before. MT: Do you think it's made your program more accessible because of the increase online? SC: Absolutely. There's some things we're never going to let go of unless it's pried from our fingers, which is that face-to-face time with our students in all of the patient care. Pre-licensure in the associate’s degree and then the FMP track for the nurse practitioner. Gotta learn how to put sutures in, and you need to do head-to-toe assessments on real people. That's just the quality we believe in. I know programs across the nation do it, but for us, our bread and butter of success is that hands-on 20 time, and we're just not going to give that up. But yes, for some of it, we certainly learned that it can be different. MT: What recognitions have you received? SC: I am lucky that I am well-recognized. I received the Presidential Teaching Award. I'm a full professor. I am tenured. I've received the University Wide Innovation Award for curriculum, actually throughout the pandemic, that my class satisfaction and things went up throughout it. I think people needed mental health, and it was in a health class I was teaching. I've received the Simulation Excellence Award; I received the Honor Society. I've been Teacher of the Year in the College. I have received lots of recognition and awards throughout the year. I was a university curriculum chair for a handful of years and implemented what we still use to this day, the huge Curriculog system. I was the chair and implemented that throughout my time and received a big award for doing that. I am always appreciative of them. We certainly work hard. Lots of people work hard, but I've had my fair share of recognition. We worked hard through the COVID pandemic and we got a big Hemingway Collaboration award for that. Our study abroad received a Hemingway Collaboration Award. I like to be involved in things, and sometimes I guess I just luck out and get recognition awards for them. But I enjoy people, and probably my favorite thing throughout the years is building relationships across campus. If nothing else, COVID is garbage. It causes garbage. What it's done to everything is garbage. It's caused so much work, but that COVID task force and the work with all the people across campus, it's such a weird blessing at the end of the day. So yes, we received recognition for that; I'm super grateful. But, man, I built relationships that have changed me forever. It’s hard not to be weirdly grateful for it and for other people that work really hard and do things because it's the right thing. That's why we did it. 21 We got those symptomatic testing centers up and running in a weekend. Then we built that practice and then got the asymptomatic testing up in the Union in five days. We just moved hard and we had hard workers and amazing people; the right people were involved with that. So that took over two years of our life, but that was a big one. We received lots from that, but it wasn't necessary. MT: What mentors or resources did you have throughout both your program and in your career here at Weber? SC: Good question. I mean, for a life mentor, I couldn't replace my sister. A, she's my only sister; B, she's a nurse. She's great, confident. We worked out lots of our concerns and worries. I can't say that I'm so upset with someone just processing and working through things. She's irreplaceable for me, just for my whole career, regardless of hospital or whatnot. My dad, and that is going to sound cheesy—just through his academic life and getting a Ph.D. and the advice of saying, “Sometimes in our life, sadly, we just jump through hoops. Don't make it bigger than that. Just do what's being asked of you and move on, and eventually you'll be qualified and have the rope long enough to do the things that you ought to do.” I literally call my dad. I'm like, “Dad, I’ve gotta talk. I need your advice on this.” I call him about everything. He's just a great resource for people. “How do I deal with this difficult person? What should I say?” Then in my career, I had the opportunity to get—I don't even know officially what it is, but I was recognized as a woman leader in Ogden a year ago or whatever. You can look at that for resources if you want. Either way, I said, “You know, I've had some amazing mentors in my career as an educator.” Kathy Culliton is one. Tamara Dahlkemper is one. Suzanne Thornock, just someone I can 22 consistently ask questions to and get advice from. They didn't judge me if the question was stupid. Suzanne: her succession planning and training and her willingness— because she helped train me to be chair and whatnot even before I even applied to be. You can't be like, “I want Sally to be chair.” You still have to apply for it, make it through other things. But her willingness to just be like, “Hey, come work through this situation with me. You never know if you're going to come across that again in the future.” It made it so I was so prepared for certain things. Kathy essentially brought me to Weber, and she's so cute, and just had endless patience and was such a cornerstone here. Historically, through the nursing program, there isn't anyone that will be like “Who?” Everyone is like, “Oh, Kathy? Yeah, I totally know her. She's so great.” Those are three great mentors here for me in the workplace. I’ve also had, out of nursing, great mentors. I can't tell you how, and this sounds maybe kind of brown-nosy, but I think Brad Mortenson is the most approachable leader I've ever met. He is a man that's like, “Sure, you want to have a conversation?” He's just such a great example of approachability. That's probably my favorite thing about Weber. There are other institutions across the state that try to steal us quite frequently, and across the board in our School of Nursing, we report never wanting to leave Weber. It is accessible leadership. There’re so many people you can approach and just be like, “Hey, I’ve gotta ask you a question.” Part of that's probably my nosey personality and that I don't really see boundaries either. I'm like, “You want to talk to me, right? We want to have this conversation.” So yes, I think Brad's awesome. He's going to do amazing things here for Weber. He's a favorite of mine in just a few short years. He's so calm. [To President 23 Mortenson, not present] Those town halls—I think you deserve an award for how calm you were staying in this town, because I might have lost my mind already. [To interviewers] He's such a great example, even informally. It's not like we sit down and have mentoring sessions, but he's a great example of a great leader and someone that I have asked questions to. He's always willing and I love that. I can name a billion at Weber. I have great friends that I've worked through with committees, and I mean, there's always informal mentoring opportunities happening. MT: You kind of mentioned this, but how have you become a mentor to others in your field? SC: That's important to me. I don't know if you guys have ever heard this, but throughout the years they've said, “Nurses eat their young.” That was a really common statement. It's terrible in the bedside care, right, in acute care and in hospitals and whatever. The purpose is, essentially, that the status quo was, “You have to earn your place here, and don't think you can supersede me for A, B or C.” That's the whole ‘nurses eat their young.’ I was so against that from almost the get-go. I was the person that was like, “Oh great, a student!” or “Oh, we have a new employee!” I believed even from the very beginning in mentoring. There is no reason to punish someone, to make them go through a process that was already established. I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, maybe sharpening it and fine-tuning it if we need it. I think I've been a mentor clear from the bedside, where I knew that I loved to teach and pass things on, even into my career here. Helping build a mentoring program because it was so important, and building formal mentors, because you'll always establish informal ones, right? Those ones you naturally become friends with or whatnot. I've managed people through accreditation processes, I've helped 24 people through tenure, we've improved tenure processes. Because I love information, I am like their Rolodex in nursing. “Oh, you need to talk to this person? This is who you call.” I'd like to believe that at some level or another, part of my mentoring, whether formal or informal, has been approachability, that I am approachable and anyone can ask me anything. I am super intentional about what I communicate and when. You just have boundaries. I don't think there's really anyone in these almost 17 years that could report watching me lose my cool. I was given great advice a few years ago that just said, “Underreact to everything.” Someone says something great and I use that in my personal life. My kids underreact to everything. That's kind of been a good way to mentor and show people, too: there's always room for kindness. There's always a space to say, “Okay, we all mess up, but what are we going to do about it?” So I think I've led by example. I've been super approachable. I've certainly been a formal mentor to many people, which always improves myself along the way. That's such a cornerstone of who I am. I think mentoring is absolutely needed in professions. MT: We kind of skipped over it, but what are some of your favorite memories of Weber? SC: That's a good question. Full transparency, the funnest time you'll ever have and the best way to build relationships is to travel with someone. We're lucky in nursing to have a pretty solid budget for faculty development. We'll take a group of people and go to a conference, or something along those lines. Those are probably, throughout the year, some of the very best memories I have because people loosen up. You get them out of the workplace and out of the day-to-day. Some of my very, very favorite memories are conference travel. I could tell you some stories, and they're all appropriate, but they're maybe like you-had-to-be-there stories, right? There were times we laughed so hard, we 25 probably were scaring the people around us. It was so funny. Missed shuttles and missed whatever-it-is; walking down the sides of highways because we're lost. There are story after story. My favorite memories are probably travel. We just have so much fun. Including study abroad, right? You may meet people, and it just changes you, and it's so great. Another one would be when I came on board as an admin, we were going to celebrate our 60 years in Nursing Education Camp, and I essentially became chair of that committee. That was a fun year, just parades and Christmas lights and all the events. We did a big gala. That was a fun memory to be involved in. I had a baby with me everywhere I went. Another really fun memory is I became associate program director, and again, I was fairly young and I had my little one, Jane. She was at the preschool down in the children's school, and Kathy Culliton would go—just because schedules are so hairy up there, we had faculty meetings from 4 to 6, and the children's school closed at five. Kathy, on those days—and I think she loved it more than I appreciated it—would go and get Jane, and they'd probably go and get ice cream across the street. Kathy and my little Jane would come in an hour late to a faculty meeting, and my little girl was sitting in the back drawing, and it's like, “Oh, Jane!” It's just such a great memory of support. People were super supportive and it just is such a fun thing. My kids were essentially raised here. I remember changing butts in the hallway outside offices. My very first-born, Bentley, was born a year after I was fulltime, so in L.A., and he's brand new. He's born on August 20th, and I taught that semester because I am a crazy person. I was like a year in and just didn't even know the rules, almost. “Am I going to get fired if I take time off?” I was just so dumb, and I was plenty old enough. I freaking was like 28 years old, but just new to 26 the workforce. Either way, I remember bringing this newborn baby, and he's asleep in his car seat, and I just sat him under Aiko Flowers’ desk and went into my class. In hindsight, man, I would do so many things differently. Those are other people's memories too, right? Bringing a little freaking infant down the hall. So many great friendships; those are so fun. Great times. The students’ clinical rotations in the hospital: you get really close to your clinical students because there's 8 to 10, and man, you're up at 4 AM, and they deal with life events and so much debriefing here. You get really close to those students. Lots of fun stories there; really fun and sad and terrible ones, but they bond you. Those are great experiences, just the moments you make a difference. So many fun things. I have endless. I could share a billion memories, but those are just a few of the ones that I just love. MT: Was the Ghana trip your first study abroad trip? SC: Nope. Ghana will go down as my last, Michael, which is so sad. Nope, we did China study abroad. If I was staying, we're building a Greece study abroad. We went on to study abroad to gain an interest in how to make that historical study abroad into a History of Medicine study abroad. That was kind of the plan. Ghana, it was so great. That's a great example: you are outside your normal zone. You're in a third-world country. You are sharing an apartment with 12 people. They're going to see you asis. I don't take the time to put makeup on; I barely brush my hair. Everyone's like, “Hey, good morning.” It's just my favorite. I love it so much. That might go down as my favorite, though. MT: Not to mention the experiences. SC: Yes. I mean, think of our department debriefings every night. It's such a beautiful thing. The times with the students in service to the children changes your life. 27 MT: Last question is, what advice would you give to students starting in the nursing field? SC: Oh, I give lots of advice, but if I could summarize, my advice would be: make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, because it's hard. Don't underestimate how hard it will be, but know it is just a blip in time. Some people give it so much weight in their life and like, “Okay, so you fail a class. Yes, it's a big deal, but we can work through it.” So my advice would be, know you want to do it. Remember you're going to be working with people, because if you don't like people, maybe don't go into nursing. I remember a student telling me once, they were like, “I just don't think it's for me.” I was like, “Well, what happened? Tell me why.” They were like, “I was in clinical and I had to touch somebody.” No kidding? Just this really funny moment that you're like, “What did you think you were going to be doing?” So remember it's about people. I could never say more how important healthy coping mechanisms are, because without fail, you'll lose a loved one, you're going to get a divorce, you're going to get married, you're going to have a baby. Life doesn't stop, and so you have to have healthy, healthy coping mechanisms to handle that stress of life because it will be stressful. It is an all-encompassing and continuous four semesters of your life. It is wild. Have a great study group. It's okay to have just a little bit of future trajectory if you want to go to grad school, because it helps plan time, and you take the right classes in your gen eds, some of that. Enjoy it. Enjoy the moment. Being a nurse is so rewarding. It is so stressful, but it is so rewarding. You change people's lives. It makes me teary. It's a beautiful thing. So yeah, that would be my advice. Life 28 happens while you're busy making other plans, so make sure you're doing it for the right reasons and enjoy it. MT: Well, thank you. This has been wonderful. CL: Concerning your study abroad in China, and I'm just curious, what part of China did you go to? SC: So the study abroad is essentially run by RADII, and we had a partnership with a school there, and two of their two faculty would spend the year here, and then we would go over in the summer and just spend a few days with their students in their health professions area. You guys, you're challenging me. We went to Beijing; we went to Shanghai—I think it's called the Jinan Province [Jinan, in the Shandong Province]. I think it's kind of up in that north region. That was the school we went to. If I'm wrong, I'll correct myself. Depending on who was there, they always changed one stop, so if you went consistently, you always went somewhere different. I had the chance to go to Yellow Mountain, which was awesome. But they've been to Hong Kong before and made that an extra stop. You always go to Jinan and Beijing and Shanghai, and then they change their fourth stop. You're gone for like 17 days, the really long one, but it's super fun. It was fun. I mean, I saw the Great Wall. It was amazing, right? China is so old. That's something you just can't replicate. That was super fun. MT: Thank you. SC: Thank you guys so much. I appreciate the opportunity, it’s fun. I love Weber and I loved my career. It's been amazing. MT: The nursing department, it's just amazing. SC: It is amazing. They do amazing things. There is a strong collection of individuals up there. If you want to get shit done, that's what they do. That's why they gave it to us. 29