This past Friday SIU Carbondale held their first inaugural Southern Illinois Nursing Educators Conference.
Erica Blumenstock, program director for nursing at SIU is just one of the faces behind the program. After attending a conference with her colleagues in Colorado, they began thinking of bringing something similar to the Southern Illinois region.
"We designed this event at SIU Carbondale. The three nurse eduators we have, we came together and identified that there was really a gap in providing professional development to nurse educators in the region," Blumenstock said.
In less than a year Blumenstock and her colleagues have been able to bring this event to fruition. While the idea originally started as a conference for solely nurse educators, Blumenstock and her team soon realized that students in the area also need this kind of professional support.
"Each of these universities also had students that had probably never attended a professional conference," said Blumenstock. "They're getting ready to graduate, they have a very important licensure test, the NCLEX, to take."
Over 150 nursing students from various community colleges, SIUC, and SIUE gathered in the student center ballrooms to take part in the days events.
The day is filled with nationally recognized speakers, NCLEX review and prep, a career fair, and even a poster competition.
Blumenstock and her colleagues are already looking forward at what next year's conference might look like.
