Kettering College Celebrates Opening of Vaughan Center for Nursing Education

	Skills lab director Peggy Allyn describes the special features of the program’s new mannequins.

Named in honor of longtime nursing faculty member and college benefactor Anna May Vaughan, the new center contains a state-of-the- art nursing skills lab as well as meeting spaces and faculty offices. The $630,000 center features such technology as virtual IV, computerized charting and interactive mannequins that can mimic symptoms of real-life patients.

More than twice the size of the original nursing skills lab, built in the 1960s, the center is set up to imitate an emergency department, with each bed space providing the same amenities found in a hospital, including suction and oxygen. Cameras and monitors placed at each station allow faculty members to remain at one bed while instructing an entire class, ensuring continuity of training. The space also features a medications room that will help students learn how to pull medications and prepare them for patients.

	Nursing students practice their skills on the lab’s new mannequins before entering their clinical rotations.

“Twenty-seven years ago, we clustered in our tiny skills lab around a bed to learn basic care, using ourselves as surrogate patients,” said 1972 Kettering College alumna and registered nurse Beverly Cobb, Ph.D., director of KCMA’s Division of Nursing. “Years later, we have sophisticated mannequins with electronic parts, IV pumps and electronic monitors of all kinds. I feel like we’ve come full circle as I watch our students cluster in small groups in the lab. The goal is still the same–to become nurses who effectively meet human needs–physical, emotional and spiritual.”

Cherie Rebar, a 1995 Kettering alumna and chair of the Associate of Science nursing program, said the difference is astronomical.

	Beverly Cobb, director of the Division of Nursing

“I feel like we were in the Stone Age and have moved up with the Jetsons–that’s how far we’ve come in this move,” Rebar said. “We’ve gone from the 1960s to tomorrow overnight–that’s in our ability to practice, to teach, and to inspire students to become nurses. We’ve always had the people; now we have the place.”

Students have appreciated the well-supplied and well-equipped lab.

“It has everything we could need,” said first-year nursing student Dawn Parton. “I haven’t come across anything I’ve needed that hasn’t been there.”

	Nursing faculty members Bev Bias, Angela Berger and Kay Vorholt

Anna May Vaughan, a pioneer in international nursing mission service in Africa and the Far East, was one of the founders of Kettering College. She also was the first director of an academic nursing degree in the greater Dayton area and was instrumental in developing the curriculum that led to the creation of Kettering College of Medical Arts.

Bearing Vaughan’s name, the center is a monument to its namesake’s spirit and leadership. Vaughan’s legacy includes the founding of the two-year academic nursing degree and providing professional structure for other allied health careers.