The new Cardinal Square Farmers Market opened Tuesday with a ribbon cutting event. Several of our colleagues have been working on this collaboration between SVSU and Kochville Township to support local farmers and local businesses. Through September, the market will be open from 1 to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Cardinal View Plaza across from campus. Please patronize the market as you have opportunity. I know the market manager – Tyson McKinley, an SVSU student, a political science and public administration major from Coldwater – will appreciate having your business.
We are fortunate to be home to one of the finest nursing programs in the Midwest, and we are grateful that Terry Moore and his wife Carleen K. Moore have provided generous support to establish the annual Carleen K. Moore R.N. Nursing Excellence awards. Liana and I attended the ceremony Monday, where seven outstanding nurses from our Great Lakes Bay Region were honored. They were: Cathy Campbell, who works for Covenant HealthCare in physical medicine and rehabilitation; Jackie Dost, who works in the emergency department of Saint Mary’s of Michigan; Rebecca Morgan, who works in McLaren Bay Region’s OB/Family Birthplace; Gordon Siu, who works in the neuro-trauma ICU at MidMichigan Medical Center-Midland; Trisha Slough, who works in the surgical services department at Saint Mary’s of Michigan Towne Centre; Jennifer Swartz, who works as a workforce development specialist at MidMichigan Health; and Julie Wright, who works as a community nurse educator for MidMichigan Health in Clare and Gladwin counties. Congratulations to all of this year’s recipients and my thanks to all our colleagues in the College of Heath and Human Services who worked on this effort.
We have many valuable community engagement opportunities, including the Dow Corning Foundation/SVSU Community STEM Partnership, an initiative that has provided resources and training since 2014 for K-12 teachers dedicated to generating student interest in STEM fields. Over the past year, 28 educators — from 14 schools in 12 districts spanning Bay, Midland, Saginaw and Tuscola counties — have participated as fellows in the program. These teachers will provide presentations on how the program benefited their classrooms during a symposium next Tuesday, May 30, from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Curtiss Hall banquet rooms. Among those in attendance will be Matt Ferguson, a 2005 SVSU alumnus who now teaches robotics and art at Kingston High School. Hear from Matt personally about how his students have spent the academic year assembling a life-sized robot using resources provided through our STEM partnership.
Please join me in extending best wishes to one of our colleagues who has accepted a new assignment. Shawn Wilson is leaving his position as director of Multicultural Student Services to become an assistant registrar, replacing Tim Burke, who is retiring. We are pleased to have someone with Shawn’s extensive higher education experience step into this important role. Over the coming weeks, we will be giving careful thought as to how to best serve our multicultural students.
A fine year by our Cardinal athletic teams comes to a close this weekend, as we have six student-athletes competing at the 2017 NCAA Division II Outdoor Championships in Bradenton, Florida this week. Best wishes to Sam Black (decathlon), Tom Goforth (5,000 meters), Ryan Kelly (shot put), Joey Southgate (10,000 meters), Taylor Stepanski (1,500 meters), and Jullane Walker (100 meters) in their competitions. This week, we also learned that Courtney Reeves of our softball team has been selected to the 2017 D2CCA All-America Honorable Mention Team.
With all conference seasons complete, we can proudly say that SVSU finished third among 15 schools in the GLIAC President's Trophy standings. This is our highest finish since 2008-09, and comes in a year when 190 of our student-athletes earned GLIAC All-Academic honors throughout the season. Please join me in congratulating our coaches, student-athletes, parents, supporters and everyone who contributed to our success academically and athletically. Go Cards!
