Southern Vermont College

and Guest bloggers Annie Blackledge & Lisa Clark Annie Blackledge is a Casey Family Programs Senior Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education. Lisa Clarke is a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education. The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Education, the United States government, Casey Family Programs or the Center for Creative Leadership.

When disasters like Sandy Hook occur, we cannot help but reconnect individually and as a nation with other similar events that have devastated us and, in some instances, continue to devastate us.  Hurricane Katrina, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy come to mind immediately.  These are what psychologists call “Large T- traumas.”

In addition to these well-known, Larger T media-covered events, here’s an oft-unrecognized and unaddressed reality: there are personal ongoing tragedies and traumas that many people have and continue to encounter.  For our most vulnerable students, such events are not one-time events; they are daily occurrences – living in poverty, experiencing hunger, witnessing or experiencing drug and alcohol abuse, separation from family members, lacking parental support and role modeling, and sleeping in shelters or on streets.   Psychologists call these “Small t-traumas,” although the word “Small” does not reference the enormity of the impact but the frequency and aggregation of ongoing trauma.

All of these types of personal traumas are dredged up by the Sandy Hook event, even if we try to keep them deeply cabined away.

What this means is that while the direct survivors of the Sandy Hook tragedy are experiencing trauma as are the first responders, so too are we.   We are experiencing what can be termed vicarious trauma — the result of witnessing (either directly or through the media) other people’s suffering and need.

One set of issues triggered by this tragedy is how we can help those in Newtown heal and how we can heal ourselves and our communities, even as the media coverage quiets down.  Another set of issues revolves around how we can prevent similar incidents moving forward.  While these two topics appear distinct, they are actually intertwined: one avenue for fostering healing of a current tragedy is to consider ways to prevent future tragedies.  By channeling energies into preventative measures, present pain is somewhat ameliorated.

Two primary prevention approaches have emerged across the nation: calls for improved gun control including assault weapon bans and/or improved mental health evaluation and treatment. As President Obama said in his State of the Union this February, we need to come together as a nation to protect our children; we cannot permit more lost birthday and graduation ceremonies.

To be sure, although debated feverishly, fewer assault weapons and better identification of and assistance for the mentally ill should help curb prospective school shootings.  But, these measures will not eliminate all school-based violence and trauma – from kindergarten through college.  That is why we need to focus on a third prevention approach that has not received sufficient attention to date in our view: a concerted effort to recognize and teach individuals and communities how to be resilient.

Stated most simply, resiliency is defined as the capacity to bounce back from or withstand the impact of untoward events and return, if possible, to the emotional state one was in before these occurrences.  Often viewed as a process rather than a trait, resiliency education involves strengthening the individual who is or may become traumatized and fostering a supportive environment that recognizes the impact of trauma and strategies for its amelioration.  For some, the current meaning of the word “resiliency” needs to be expanded to capture fully the nuances of trauma, including the fact that some traumas are so severe that the recuperation is never complete and that for others, return to the status quo ante is an impossibility.

The calls for ex ante resiliency education have already been heard and implemented in other contexts. The National Academies Press just published a report titled Disaster Resilience:  A National Imperative, focusing on the role local, state and federal agencies can play in preparing for disaster situations.

The US Military has increasingly employed resiliency training to better prepare deploying soldiers for the devastations of war.   And, there are growing initiatives within some schools – with a set of emerging promising practices – to develop trauma sensitive environments and resiliency among our most vulnerable students.  And, there is new thinking on an expanded framework for reflecting on what it truly means to be resilient.

Moving forward, we can and should debate how best to build and assess the effectiveness of resiliency education. But what is crucial now is to recognize the value of — and our capacity to teach – resiliency.  This will benefit not only those who experienced one-time traumas; it will help ameliorate repeated traumas many of America’s children experience day-in and day-out.

So, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, we can begin to heal ourselves and our communities – post facto and ex ante – by developing resiliency.  And, as the memorials disappear in Newtown and as the noise around this tragedy starts to quiet, we cannot stop our efforts to prepare our nation and its children for life’s exigencies – for both Large T and Small t traumas.  If not now, when?

In a March 18th blog below, I shared with you background about the College’s dispute with the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC). In a letter the College received April 1, NLNAC informed us that its Board of Commissioners had voted to deny continuing accreditation to the College’s nursing programs.

This decision was not a surprise, although we had held out hope that sound reasoning and good judgment would prevail. It was – is – a great disappointment, however. We know the quality and value of our nursing programs and firmly believe NLNAC did not follow its own rules and review procedures, and it violated common law due process and other legal standards.

The College has already begun working on our appeal, which we will file following NLNAC’s protocols.  Also, we are planning to file a lawsuit against NLNAC and the drafting of that complaint is underway.

In statements I issued to our campus community and to the media after receiving the letter, I was emphatic the nursing education programs at SVC are not in jeopardy as a result of NLNAC’s flawed decision. The College’s nursing programs are approved by the Vermont State Board of Nursing and – most importantly – the state board recently approved a new four-year Bachelor of Science in nursing program. This speaks to the quality and importance of the College’s nursing education.

SVC’s NLNAC accreditation continues through the appeals process.  It is not required for the College to have NLNAC’s accreditation and is something we have sought voluntarily.

I want all in the SVC community to know I believe in our nursing students and faculty and will fight NLNAC with full force to reverse its decision and begin anew a fair accreditation review process that reflects the facts and is respectful of all here who are so deeply committed to this vital area of study.

~~~

March 18, 2013

In a few short months, more than 60 students will receive either a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing or an Associate Degree in Nursing from Southern Vermont College. They are, like the hundreds before them and the hundreds who will follow, highly employable. They will begin their careers in a wide range of health care settings across our nation, with a degree from a fully accredited and financially sound institution.

Southern Vermont College and its various programs are accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC) and the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology. Our nursing programs have been approved by the Vermont State Board of Nursing through 2016, and I am excited to report that we recently received its approval to launch a new four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree program.

Every graduate from our nursing program, past and future, is empowered with a degree that is recognized and valued by hospitals, nursing homes, medical centers, physicians and clinics. We’re proud our nurses are caring for patients at many of the best medical facilities in our region and far beyond, including Southwestern Vermont Health Center, North Adams Regional Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center, Fletcher Allen Health Care, Albany Medical Center, Lincoln Medical & Mental Health Center as well as hospitals in California, Arizona, South Carolina and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Process of Continuing Accreditation and SVC

You may be aware that, over the last several months, the College and the NLNAC have disagreed about whether the SVC nursing programs meet the NLNAC requirements for continuing accreditation when the current programmatic accreditation expires.

To that end, in December 2012, the College filed a response to the NLNAC site visit report based on an NLNAC visit to our campus in October 2012. We identified 40 factual errors in that site team’s report – 34 of which were ignored and still remain uncorrected. These were not simple errors of judgment or opinion, but errors of fact that went to the heart of the site visit’s validity and integrity. College personnel then traveled to Atlanta, GA, in January 2013, expecting to be heard by the Evaluation Review Panel, but we were not permitted to speak before that group voted. The Peer Evaluation Reviewers could not, in our view, make a fair, unbiased judgment based on an uncorrected site visit report and no opportunity to hear the College’s explanation of the uncorrected factual deficiencies.

As we await a decision from the NLNAC that will come from its March 2013 meeting, we remain concerned that the Commission will be basing its judgment on a flawed report and, consequently, a deeply flawed process. Our digging a little deeper into the NLNAC standards, rules and procedures – including as they were applied to Southern Vermont College – reveals that it is their process, not our program, which is flawed.

You may be familiar with the quote often attributed to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  Facts matter.

And most disturbing of all was the cavalier and dismissive attitude some NLNAC site team members demonstrated toward our students. Site team members repeatedly said when they were on campus that “we needed to get better students.” Imagine that. Imagine how that makes faculty, staff and students feel. And their premise is not correct; we do not need better students.

We are proud of all of our students. Many are the first in their families to earn a college education. Many are Pell-eligible. We admit students who may not have graduated from elite prep schools or elite high schools, but that has no relevance to their desire and capacity to become amazing nurses. Our students are improving their overall performance on the national nursing licensing exam. And our students now score higher than the national average among those taking the standardized HESI maternity assessment.

This is what SVC does: We take students committed to learning and help to turn them into amazing professionals, capable of meeting and exceeding the standards and national licensing requirements. At a time when quality and affordable health care is foremost in our minds, Southern Vermont College is helping to educate the next generation of nursing professionals.

It’s time for the NLNAC to return to our campus and begin the review process anew, a remedy we offered and which we hope the Commission will accept.  We would graciously welcome their return. The key is that the accreditation process to date has been defective, and the NLNAC should live by its own rules, by common law due process and the standards of the nursing profession. To do otherwise is to fail SVC, our healthcare system and the Commission’s responsibility as an accrediting agency.

While we hope for a new visit from the NLNAC, if that does not occur, we will continue our fight for a fair accreditation process, including filing an appeal and legal action, if necessary.

Respect for our students, our faculty, our program, our institution and the entire accreditation process demands nothing less.

This is the first in a series of blogs on lessons I learned from the year I spent as a Senior Policy Advisor to the US Department of Education.  Some of the lessons were profound; some were poignant; some were “political,” defined as lessons emanating directly from the ways our government and our Democracy function (not “political” as in Democrat or Republican).

My hope is twofold: I hope these blogs enable me to share effectively the experiences I had and my reflections of them – post DC and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight; I also hope these blogs will encourage others to reflect on the experiences they are having – whether on campus or in the workplace or at home – and to sort through the lessons learned.  If this experience in DC taught me nothing else, it reinforced for me that learning is a continuous process and one can always learn, regardless of one’s age and stage in life.

When I arrived at the Department of Education (the Department or ED) in January of 2012, there was no shortage of things to learn, not the least of which were acronyms. Across government – indeed across DC — acronyms are ubiquitous. The Department has a daunting number commonly used acronyms; new staff receive a list of them and other lists are provided as appendices to government issued documents.

Several days after I started work, I provided the following answer to my husband when he asked about my day: “I was at PCP with OVAE to discuss AEFLA and Perkins IV.”  In short, I was speaking a new language. He looked at me as if I had landed from a different planet…. and he was not wrong.

Now, the good news is that I had quickly assimilated some capacity to speak in acronyms.  I instantly created my own acronym for what had just happened to me: QUAK (Quick Uptake of Acronym Knowledge).  In short, I was quaking, my word for speaking in acronyms.

To be sure, being a good quaker helps when one is communicating within ED and across the government.  The acronyms I uttered to my husband address the important work of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education and its programs, which further the President’s goal of increasing the workforce readiness of Americans.

But, here’s the problem: acronyms are often not understood by those outside of government.  That makes it hard for “outsiders” to engage with “insiders.”

Acronym-speak is not unique to government. There is lawyer-speak and doctor-speak. Within our colleges and universities, there is professor-speak.  These “languages” all serve a similar function and have a similar effect: They ease communication among insiders, and they alienate, whether by design or otherwise, outsiders.

Importantly, we are in a time when we want our Government to be more transparent, and this idea has been embraced by this Administration.  This is key to enabling us to be a Government of the people, by the people, for the people — a goal emphasized in the President’s 2013 Inaugural Address where he kept repeating, “We, the people…”

If we want to engage non-governmental folks in the issues confronting our nation, acronyms do not help.  Lesson learned.  Now that I am outside the Beltway, I plan to do my part by quaking less.  And, if you catch me quaking, ask me to stop (politely of course) and remind me that speaking like alphabet soup does not encourage learning and understanding.