With masks and moxie, Norwich greets spring semester students
New electronic scheduling system, staff efforts smooth COVID-19 testing and arrivals, officials say
By the time students began arriving on Norwich University’s Northfield, Vermont, campus Friday for the Spring 2021 semester, teams of Norwich faculty and staff were ready. Electronic message boards in campus buildings were loaded with greetings, COVID-19 tests were waiting at Plumley Armory and Facilities Operations staff members stood ready to move snow and ease movement.
As in the fall, university departments across campus the School of Nursing, the Center for Civic Engagement, Facilities Operations, athletic coaches, faculty and staff had followed President Mark C. Anarumo’s “Norwich Together” motto to prepare. In his electronic message board statement to students, College of National Services Dean Matthew Smith told students, “Take care of your wingman/battle buddy and let’s get after it!”
A coat, a commitment, a celebration
Seventy-two nursing students make transition from classroom learning to patient care
The “share” screen’s upper half started off dark toward the end of Thursday’s virtual White Coat Ceremony, almost like a gloaming sky. In phases, on command, cameras winked on, revealing tiny images of Norwich University nursing students in their new white coats. In waves, members of the Classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 formed a tiny galaxy.
That the students shined starlike fit. Seventy-two of them had sworn an oath to keep humanity central as they progressed. Donning their white coats marked their transition from classroom-based instruction to the beginning of hands-on patient care.
Amid pandemic, health care practitioners review, rethink, reimagine
In Resilient Vermont Network talk, health care panel discusses telemedicine and other patient-serving adaptations
The coronavirus pandemic forced health care’s practitioners to be both in and on. “In” as in office for visits, routine and emergency; “on” as in on camera, to connect with far-off patients who are checking in from home.
A panel of experts Norwich Nursing Director Paulette Thabault, Dr. Alissa Thomas, a neurologist and neuro-oncologist and an assistant professor at the University of Vermont Medical Center and Dr. Roshini Pinto-Powell, a professor of medicine and medical education and Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine said Monday that the pandemic also had practitioners nationwide rethinking care’s delivery and newly embracing technology.