Summer will be pretty busy for members of the Alliance for Healthcare Education. They just don’t know exactly what they will be doing yet.
Thursday’s last-minute finalization of the state budget by the Missouri Senate preserved a $15 million allocation for the alliance. All that is required now is approval from Gov. Mike Parson.
Announced in August 2023, the Alliance for Healthcare Education creates an accelerated pathway to fill crucial job openings in the medical industry, taking students from high school all the way to a master’s degree if they choose.
If the governor leaves the budget line item as is, then the alliance members plan to start renovating unused areas of the Cox College campus at Division and Jefferson streets.
The plan for that, however, is still preliminary — so preliminary that officials with CoxHealth and the alliance are planning to plan.
“There is no playbook here, because no one else has done this,” said Shallina Goodnight, executive director for the alliance. “So what we are focusing on is what needs to happen right now, as we step into this. In terms of what would a budget look like to outfit this entire building — that would be hard to say at this point, because we are still dreaming about exactly what that should look like.”
That doesn’t mean work isn’t getting done. Springfield Public Schools and Ozarks Technical Community College are ready to take on 50 students in fall 2024, and Missouri State University officials are laying the groundwork amongst themselves and with the State Board of Nursing to coordinate certifications.
There is a clock ticking — the fall ‘25 semester is intended to host the partnership’s first classes at the Cox College campus.
That means the summer of 2024 will be a formative one, filled with big questions awaiting answers. Goodnight said the work that will be done over the next few months will help determine direction, scope and goals as this unique partnership gets rolling.
How the alliance will work to train medical professionals
The four founding partners of the Alliance for Healthcare Education — SPS, OTC, MSU and Cox College — worked out a general plan to merge their strengths and eliminate redundancies.
High school students can receive industry-specific training and earn career certifications alongside their diplomas, giving them a preview about what the field has to offer, and an advantage on coursework.
OTC will expand its programs that offer associates degrees or other certifications, while MSU will offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees in nursing. All of the collegiate programs will be housed on Cox College’s campus, and Cox College’s programs will be absorbed into OTC and Missouri State.
Recent moves for Alliance, SPS and Missouri State
In the long run, the four partners will be able to train more students, and those students can earn necessary certifications faster at less expense than they can today. Pending accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission, the alliance could create one of the largest pools of health science professionals in the Midwest.
A lot of that groundwork has already been done. In November 2023, SPS and OTC formalized the SPS Choice program that those students would take, opening it up to 50 interested sophomores who would take classes during their junior and senior years.
Also over the last year, the alliance’s board chose its fifth member, Rob Fulp, and hired Goodnight as its executive director. Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Grenita Lathan was named as the board’s president, and each of the founding partners paid almost $50,000 each as seed money for startup costs.
During a May 9 meeting of the MSU Board of Governors, Executive Vice President Zora Mulligan said that work led by Mark Smith, Dean of MSU’s College of Health and Human Services, was progressing to develop more specific course pathways.
“Smith and his team have continued to have really positive discussions with the state’s board of nursing,” Mulligan said. “He and his team have also been working on academic programming and occupational therapy and dietetics.”
Unused building space at Cox College
Cox College has a more than 100-year history of training students for the medical professions. Formed in 1907 as the Burge Deaconess Training School for Nurses, it grew alongside Cox Hospital.
The college has upgraded its training centers, course offerings and materials repeatedly over the years. About 30,000 square feet of its building footprint has not been used since the ‘60s, Goodnight said.
The $15 million allocation from the Missouri government will go toward renovating that space, Goodnight said.
“It’s a beautiful, full-circle moment for this building that holds so much history,” Goodnight said. “So it’s really great to see it be reborn into something really meaningful, and something our community can be proud of.”
The space is needed to handle an anticipated surge in interested students, Goodnight said. But if the $15 million gets vetoed by the governor, the alliance can still work toward its goal.
The transformation of the Cox North campus
OTC Chancellor Hal Higdon and Missouri State University President Clif Smart said that there is about 70,000 square feet of space at Cox College that is already ready for students. The utilization of unused space gives OTC and MSU enough space to effectively double their programs.
Portions of Cox College were renovated as late as 2020, Goodnight said. Dorm rooms have been converted into offices, and parts of Cox Medical Center North have been transformed into industry-standard spaces for students.
That includes a simulation lab, set up inside a former emergency ward. Each station features simulation dummies educators use to train nursing students on how to administer care before they treat living, breathing patients.
Christina Liles, a simulation specialist with Cox College, said their training dummies are equipped with software and equipment to make training as realistic as possible. One dummy is equipped for pregnancy — it includes an infant dummy and simulated fluids. Another dummy is intended to be an older person, and features everything from wrinkled and spotted skin to gnarled feet and yellowed teeth.
All of the dummies are monitored from a central room, where instructors can observe each student, and add variables to the training exercises, such as a patient trying to say something.
“We also do a multi-patient sim, where we have (a student) take care of three patients at one time,” Liles said. “As call lights go off, they have to learn how to prioritize. And we also have students posed as family members of those patients, so they can learn how to take care of family members at the bedside.”
Cox College’s training resources also include an apartment, where future emergency responders can learn how to negotiate obstacles in someone’s home. Having all of that training equipment next door to an actual hospital gives students even more advantages, Goodnight said.
Goodnight said she is grateful for the Springfield area’s elected leaders, who pushed for the $15 million budget allocation in the budget sent to the governor. She said the next few months will be spent preparing exactly how the alliance will grow, based on what kind of support they get.
It also includes foundational tasks such as building a website, continuing partner development, and further streamlining student pathways.
“These next few months are probably going to be the less glamorous things, but the things that need to be done well in order to create the scalability we need,” Goodnight said. “We want to do this right. We have this great commitment and investment from our founding partners, elected officials and community, so we want to honor that and build this right.”
