The-Laker-Issue-Fall-2021

Today’s nursing students are entering a profession that offers more and demands more. from the cover Ivan Castillo-Serrano tends patients suffering cardiac arrest, high fevers and broken bones as an emergency room nurse at Newark-Wayne Community Hospital. No case has made his heart pound harder than it did in the tense moments he and nine others waited in the Sonoran Desert for the signal to cross from Mexico into the U.S. in January 2006. Eight years later, working long hours at construction and restaurant jobs, Ivan was no closer to the better life he had sought in America. “I was tired of who I was – nobody. I was going to finish my education because I wanted to be somebody. I was tired of being illegal,” he said. It took Ivan seven more years to become a U.S. citizen, find his calling, graduate from FLCC and pass the national nursing exam. Faculty praised his performance in clinical assignments, but he struggled with tests as a newcomer to English. In May, his wife, Erin, and two daughters, Jeanavesa and Izel, walked across the stage with him at commencement to fasten his nursing pin. Just over 50 years after FLCC’s first nursing ceremony on Feb. 10, 1970, Ivan represents both the change and tradition of the College’s program. Students today are often older and have diverse backgrounds. They must make frequent clinical judgments as medicine becomes increasingly advanced and an aging population requires more care. Yet, like alumni from decades ago, recent graduates learned from instructors who both rooted for them and held them to high standards. 4 | the LAKER A WATERSHED MOMENT FOR NURSING