Calvin Nurses Prep for Pinning

May 9, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Almost 60 Calvin College nursing students will receive their pins
next week in a century-old nursing tradition.

For the full story, including a color JPG of the pin, see:
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/nursing-pins.htm
 
Calvin College will hold its annual department of nursing pinning ceremony at
8 p.m. on Thursday, May 17 in the college’s Fine Arts Center (FAC).
Refreshments will follow in the Commons Dining Hall.

This year 59 graduating nursing students (57 women and two men) will receive
their nursing pins in a tradition that harks back 23 years at Calvin and
generations in the nursing field.

“You find the pinning ceremony goes back over a hundred years in the nursing
profession,” says nursing department chair Mary Molewyk Doornbos of the
practice, which has as its antecedent the ceremonial granting of badges to
healers.

The Calvin pinning ceremony is typically a big event, drawing about 500 to 600
friends and family of the graduating nurses to the FAC. Calvin nursing
professor Margaret Harvey will offer the pinning address, and the event will
also feature a short address on the pinning ceremony tradition, as well as
student reflections and a slide show of nursing department highlights from
2006-2007.

Among those highlights will be images of Calvin students practicing their
healing art in places such as Belize (a site of a January interim class) and
closer to home in the three Grand Rapids neighborhoods where the nursing
students spend a major part of their Calvin nursing career, learning
community-based healthcare.

The central event of the evening will be the presentation of nursing pins to
each individual student, a signal event for the participants. The Calvin
nursing pin holds the added distinction of being designed by Calvin nursing
students.

Following the presentation of the pins, the students will light the Florence
Nightingale candle, a tribute to the woman credited with founding the nursing
profession.

Contact Doornbos at 616-526-6268 or door@calvin.edu

-end-
Received on Wed May 9 11:43:12 2007