Senior Project 1

Senior Project

Eva Marie R. Short

Victor Valley College School of Nursing

Senior Project 2

Assessment

The responsibilities of Class Vice President include organizing, leading and documenting

student/faculty meetings, as well as offering support to the yearbook and graduation committees

respectively. Student/Faculty meetings are once a month meetings where the students and faculty

can get together and the students can voice their concerns, suggestions and clarify any rules or

regulations they feel are not entirely clear. The bulk of the attendance at these meetings are

representatives who are elected from each clinical group from processes one, two and three.

While all the students in the nursing program are welcome to attend, the clinical group

representatives must attended in order to fulfill their community service hours required for that

semester. During the meetings a record must be kept of what topics were brought up, what was

discussed about each topic and what outcome, decision or resolution was made regarding that

topic. The document on which this is recorded is referred to as the the minutes. Someone must

take the down the minutes in real time and then later they are transcribed into a typed official

document. In addition to the minutes, the meeting must be kept somewhat organized, because

while student/faculty is an open forum for everyone to bring up their concerns and suggestions, it

still needs to be organized, timely, and respectful of everyone in attendance. In order to

accomplish this goal certain rules had to be set forth to facilitate the cooperation of everyone in

a cohesive group.

As a function of the position as Class Vice President it became necessary to help
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graduation committee with the choosing of music for certain parts of the ceremony. This

required participation from the class as a whole to choose two songs, one they would walk into

and one they would walk out to after the ceremony was over. This would necessitate more than

one vote to take place and an approval process from faculty that facilitate the ceremony.The

process had already been started to a degree when the project had to be taken over. Some song

suggestions had been posted on the web site Facebook and those suggestions would need to be

taken into consideration during the voting process. Once the two songs are chosen then they will

need to be burned onto a CD and given to the person responsible for the music during the

ceremony as well as an explanation as to which song was for walking into the ceremony and

which song was for walking out of the ceremony. Planning Planning for student/faculty had to be started right away and be done quickly due to the

fact that the first meeting was on the first Wednesday of the new semester. Planning is described

by Sommer (2013) as “The decisions regarding what needs to be done, how it will be done and

who is going to do it.” (p.4) Having an understanding that Wednesday was the first day of school

for some students in the nursing program it was imperative that an announcement be made to all

of the nursing students. The goal of this announcement was give people notice so they could

elect a representative for their clinical group, reduce the number of absent representatives from

the first meeting and give new nursing students a general idea of what student/faculty meetings

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are all about .The next step in the planning process was to decide how to run the meetings, who

would take the minutes and what template the minute taker would use during the meeting.

Deciding how the meetings would be run was facilitated by the fact that student/faculty is a long

running committee in the nursing program and a general schedule is followed from semester to

semester. For instance, student/faculty meetings are every first Wednesday of the month for the

duration of the semester. They are one hour from 12:30pm to 1:30pm and are generally in the

same room on campus each meeting. With regards to to the minutes, a similar template from

previously used templates was devised for the first meeting, a person from nursing process one

was chosen to take down the minutes. All the meetings would be conducted in this way except a

different person from a different process would be chosen to take the minutes at subsequent

meetings. The goal of this planning was to ensure consistency in attendance, encourage

participation, and facilitate an organized timely meeting. The leadership style used to facilitate

these outcomes was transactional which Sommer (2013) states “focus on immediate problems,

maintaining the status quo and using rewards to motivate followers.” (p.4)

The planning for choosing the music for graduation also had to be done quickly as it was

getting nearer to the end of semester and the class no longer had regular lecture meetings. The

song suggestions list from the website facebook was obtained through the class president through

email. With that information and the two class meetings being one week apart from each other

the plan was to have a suggestion collection and preliminary vote to narrow it down to the top
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three choices for each song and then have the final vote and approval from faculty the following

week. The goal of this planning was to allow everyone to collaborate together at the same time

and get the list narrowed down so students would have time to review the top three choices and

be prepared to make a decision the following week, which would allow adequate time for a copy

of the CD to be made before the graduation ceremony.

Implementation

During the first student/faculty meeting general introductions were made and the initial

sign in sheet was signed. This way it’s clear who is supposed to be there and that every group

from processes, one, two, and three have a representative. Before students voiced their concerns

during this first meetings, a general outline of how the meetings would go, what the purpose the

of the meetings are and a few basic guidelines were given. Most of the first meeting was

questions about policies, uniforms and use of the new building. The second meeting was more

questions about uniforms, next semester’s graduation and ASB computer lab printing limits. The

last issue, about ASB computer lab printing could not be answered in the meeting. Therefore,

follow up with the ASB student nurse representative was needed to ask what could be done about

maybe getting the limit increased for the nursing students. The nursing student ASB

representative took the issue to the next ASB meeting. ASB said they were willingly to increase

the nursing students printing limit to accommodate for print lecture slides, with the contingency

that ASB be allowed to have and print the lecture slides themselves during down time. This
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suggestion was taken to faculty, who said they were not comfortable releasing their lecture

materials to ASB. Faculty also requested a survey be done to determine what impact ASB

computer lab printing has on the nursing students as a whole. The nursing student ASB

representative communicated to ASB that faculty would not want to release their lecture

materials. Therefore, ASB suggested the nursing students come in during off peak hours to print

their lecture slides. Meanwhile, a survey was created and disbursed to the clinical group

representatives at the third student/faculty meeting. The representatives were instructed to

conduct the survey at their next clinical post conference and report the results back within the

following week. In order to follow up with the representatives a form was passed out for

everyone to put their email address on and was collected at the end of the meeting. Initial results

of the survey indicate that the majority of the nursing students use or would use the ASB

computer printing lab to print their lecture slides. The ASB representative will ask ASB for a

confirmation regarding what decisions they have come up with regarding printing and peak

times. This information will then be passed on to the students at the next student/faculty meeting

in December. Following that meeting, the minutes and any unresolved issues will be passed onto

the Vice President elect for next semester’s NP4 class.

Suggestions for songs were taken during breaks from NP4’s special Ostomy training

class. A list was made and passed around so people could look up the songs while on breaks and

during lunch. At the end of the class the first Vote was taken and the list was narrowed down to a
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top three with each selection. That list was then typed up in an email and forwarded to everyone

in the class so that the songs could be reviewed of the next week. During the next class meeting,

the class and faculty will listen to the songs chosen and if faculty approves then the class will

vote and the song with the most votes will be chosen for each selection. After the selections are

finalized then a copy of the songs will be made to give to the person doing the music for

graduation along with instructions of which song is walking in and which song is for walking

out.

Evaluation

Neither one of these projects is complete yet, but will be complete by the end of the

semester. The last student/faculty meeting is Dec. 2 2015. Student/Faculty has gone very well.

The meetings have been consistent, organized and productive. Attendance has been good with

only one absence so far during this semester. There have been no major problems during the

student/faculty meetings, some guidance is necessary when too many people start talking at

once, or when someone forgets to state their name and process for the minute taker. These

problems have been easily corrected by simply calling attention to them. Not everyone

responded to the survey in a timely manner. A reminder email was sent out to those who had not

followed through and a second and last reminder email will be sent out by the end of the week.

Then the results will be finalized. As of right now, 14 of the 17 representatives have sent in their

results. Music selection will take place next week, however, so far the process has gone well. Bibliography

1.Sommer, S. (n.d.). Nursing leadership and management ; review module edition 6.0 (p. 4).
2.Sommer, S. (n.d.). Nursing leadership and management ; review module edition 6.0 (p. 4).

Addendum

Hours Log: Date : Time: Description: * 08/31/2015 1 Hour Making Announcement/Disbursement * 09/02/2015 1.25 Hour September Student Faculty Meeting * 09/06/2015 1 Hour Transcribing Student/Faculty Minutes * 10/05/2015 .25 Hour Obtaining Copies of previous Minutes * 10/07/2015 1 Hour October Student Faculty Meeting * 10/09/2015 1 Hour Transcribing Student/Faculty Minutes * 10/15/2015 .25 Hour Follow up with ASP Representative * 10/20/2015 2 Hours Developing and Print ASB Printing Survey * 11/04/2015 .25 Hours Obtaining Copies of previous Minutes * 11/04/2015 1 Hours November Student/Faculty Meeting * 11/06/2015 1 Hour Transcribing Student/Faculty Minutes * 11/12/2015 1 Hours Preliminary Voting On Graduation Music * 11/16/2015 .5 Hours Follow up with ASB Representative * 11/23/2015 .25 Hours Final Vote/Faculty Approval on Music * 12/02/2015 .25 Hours Obtaining Copies of previous minutes * 12/02/2015 1 Hours December Student Faculty Meeting * 12/03/2015 1 Hours Transcribing Student Faculty Minutes * 12/07/2015 .5 Hours Pass off report to NP4 Vice President Elect * 12/11/2015 .5 Hours Make copy of music for Graduation
Total Hours : 14.75 Hours