UCA nursing students Alex Shaffer, Maggie Mehl and Grace Tolliver join Ashley M. Blankenship and Elizabeth Blankenship during a check presentation to the UCA Department of Nursing.
The University of Central Arkansas Foundation Inc. received $215,500 Monday from the Blakenship family to support the Nursing Simulation Lab in the Department of Nursing.
“Nursing has afforded me the opportunity to care for a lot of individuals,” said Elizabeth A. Blankenship, CEO of Southridge Village Nursing and Rehabilitation. “With our ability to gift to the nursing program, the students will have some of the best technology available to them, and I believe it will assist in their training and education.”
Blankenship, along with her daughters and fellow UCA alumnae, Ashley M. Blankenship and Gretchen E. Humphreys, made the gift in a presentation that included UCA faculty, staff and students.
“Thank you very much for your generosity,” UCA President Tom Courtway said. “Thank you, more than anything else, for believing in UCA and believing in this college and this department.”
The gift will help outfit the Department of Nursing with a high fidelity mannequin, as well as cameras, microphones, a control station and other equipment to record student performance. The mannequin will be remotely controlled by the instructor and modified in real time to evaluate the skill and problem-solving ability of a student or student team, according Dr. Barbara Williams, chair of the Department of Nursing.
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