THE SECOND DEGREE: Nursing group lets students cooperate

The school often perceived by its students as "user-friendly" may recently have become even friendlier. Several students in the Nursing School have organized an umbrella group, aimed at increasing interaction between graduate, master's program and undergraduate students. The group will provide everything from mentoring programs and career counseling to a structure for student activities. One of the main goals of the Joint Council, formed last spring, is to combat the "disjointedness" in the organization of the activities within the school, according to Nursing doctoral student Peter Preziosi, who founded the Council. And Nursing senior Christi Smith, president of the Nursing Student Forum, said the group provides an invaluable channel for communication among students in the the undergraduate, master's and doctoral programs, and also promotes contact with the administration. Also, in one of the Council's main programs, Nursing undergraduates are paired with master's and doctoral students who advise them on research and career options. The Joint Council is composed of the leaders of the four main student groups in the Nursing School: the Student Forum, Student Nurses at Penn, the Master's Student Organization, and the Doctoral Student Organization. Several students who sit on the Council said they are better able to approach the administration because the groups work together to pinpoint problems. "If all three schools are together we can go to the administration and say 'These are our concerns,' " Smith said. "We're much stronger combined than individually." Preziosi, president of the Doctoral Student Organization, said the group also broadens students' awareness about post-graduation opportunities. "It exposes the undergraduates to the work that we do at the doctoral and the master's level," he said. "It shows that we are not just hospital nurses but involved in health care policy and clinical research." The forum also provides benefits for the school's master's degree candidates, Preziosi said. "The doctoral students help to ground them and assist them with the system," he said, since the master's program one-year duration allows little time for students to get to know the school and their professors." Preziosi said he expects the bonds students make in the group to pay off later. "When these people are in high-powered nursing positions around the country, we'll call them up and say 'remember working with me on Joint Council?' " he said. "It's that networking ability that we really need more of in the nursing profession," he added. Preziosi said students appreciate the interaction the Council provides and relate more easily with the upper-level students than they might with their professors. "They're not threatened by us because we're not grading them," Preziosi said. "We're still coming from a student perspective." The Council is currently planning a variety of events, ranging from brown-bag lunches with professors to a forum on health-care ethics with the Archbishop of Philadelphia. Preziosi said he expects this type of interaction between students in different degree programs to catch on in other professional schools at the University. "This could be a model for other schools in the University that have doctoral and master's programs," he said. One of the Council's first projects this year was to provide a calendar to coordinate and publicize Nursing student events. "The first thing we examined was how to organize all the information that students are bombarded with," Preziosi said.

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