Recent graduates return to be on Beattie Advisory Boards

Please join us in thanking everyone who joined us in-person and virtually for our Fall Advisory Board gathering, in which alum and professionals meet with all of our instructors to discuss what education and training is needed to prepare students for post-secondary and career paths.

Two of the Career Center’s recent graduates, Deer Lakes’ Paige Thompson and Shaler Area’s Autumn Bayne, returned to the Health and Nursing Sciences program.

Paige is a CNA and plans to attend school to be a registered nurse.

“It’s nice to come back and talk about what worked to prepare me like all of the bedside skills,” Paige said. “Developing communication and the hands-on skills was also really important. After high school. there were six weeks of training for what I do now, and I knew all of it from the time that I was here.”

Autumn is a PCT and is attending school to be a registered nurse.

“Things like bedmaking helps a lot,” Autumn said. “Turning patients and the tips and tricks that we learned helped a lot, because I am a super tiny person compared to most patients. Being here at Beattie prepared us for so many different situations, including going to school and, for me, starting clinicals soon. I feel more prepared than anyone else in my college classes to do everything, and that made me want to come back here to support the Health and Nursing Sciences program.”

Instructors like Mrs. Dietz, who taught Paige and Autumn in their senior year, said it’s vital to have recent graduates on Advisory Boards.

“It’s really important to have recent alum give feedback to us about what works, what we should focus on more, and it’s great to see how they’ve branched off into different fields within healthcare,” Mrs. Dietz said. “We listen to what they say is really important like vital signs and medical terminology, which reiterates what we are doing is really working for them. We also had (North Allegheny’s) Ashley Weidinger online and she’s at RMU, so you get to see how they’re all excelling in different settings based off of what started here in our program, which is really encouraging.”