Lamar Community College Nursing Education Program held its annual pinning ceremony on Thursday, May 4, 2023, in the Lamar High School auditorium.
The nursing pin and ceremonial pinning tradition originated in the 1860s at the Nightingale School of Nursing in St. Thomas Hospital, London. Having recently been awarded the Red Cross of St. George for her selfless service to the injured and dying in the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale honored her most outstanding graduate nurses by presenting each of them with a medal for excellence.
The nursing pin remains a symbolic medal of honor. The pinning ceremony is, therefore, so much more than an event to mark the completion of nursing school. It is a beautiful rite of passage into the profession and reminds us of nursing’s well-founded historic promise to serve the infirm.
In the ceremony, fifteen RN and seven LPN candidates were honored for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to the program. The RN candidates earn an ACEN-accredited Associate of Applied Science degree, and the LPN candidates earn the Board of Nursing-approved certificate in practical nursing along their path toward the Associate’s degree.
Both groups are eligible for the licensing examination and must complete the NCLEX successfully before using the title of Registered Nurse or Licensed Practical Nurse. RN candidates complete 71.5 credit hours of coursework with 753 hands-on clinical practice hours in various healthcare settings, covering at least four specialty areas: medicine and surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, and psychiatric mental health.
Student speakers included Cynthia Rodriguez, who highlighted the impact of the program on her personally, as she has worked diligently on this goal, and Kirsten Summers, who is a third-generation LCC nursing program student who comes from a family of nurses, many of whom serve this community. Both offered class-specific memories that will forever bond the graduating groups, as well as profound thanks to those in the community and audience who supported their efforts. Dr. Rosana Reyes, Lamar Community College president, presented the student groups as meeting all of the Board of Nursing and Board of Community College’s program requirements for RN and LPN candidates.
You can join the next wave of compassionate caregivers as they embark on their nursing journey. Lamar Community College’s nursing program offers smaller class sizes, and dedicated single-course faculty leads for a more personalized educational experience, diverse clinical rotations, commuter student-friendly scheduling, RN tutoring, and strong local and nursing community connections that fuel nursing students into the workforce ready to meet today’s health care challenges. Working LPNs also have the option to join the 2nd year courses to complete eligibility criteria to become Registered Nurses, also through a very employed-friendly schedule.
The College’s health simulation space is under renovation, which students joining in Fall 2023 will use to ensure they have simulated clinical experiences in high-acuity, low-volume patient scenarios using the most up-to-date equipment.
The Fall 2023 cohort is enrolling now. Please contact Dr. Morgan Clark, Nursing Program Director, for more information at 719-336-1597 or morgan.clark@lamarcc.edu.