The Outreach: For 25 years, Nursing faculty traveled state

Kleine-Kracht and Dr. John Oppelt, vice president of Academics, visited Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, about 30 miles from Prestonsburg, and met with a group of approximately 50 enthusiastic nurses interested in learning about Bellarmine’s program. In the summer of 1984, Alice Lloyd held the first Outreach classes in Eastern Kentucky. Within just two years, six Outreach sites were operating, each offering two to six courses for BSN and MSN students. By the mid-1990s, Ashland was the sole Outreach site and remained so until the program ended in 2007.   

Faculty Experiences 

Bellarmine’s nursing faculty recall having mixed reactions to the Outreach program when they heard about it for the first time in a faculty meeting. Few had visited far Eastern or far Western Kentucky, and they expressed concerns about the required travel and time away from home, which would be especially difficult for those with young children. Many already carried heavy teaching loads that included evening hospital clinicals two nights a week. Still, most were enthusiastic about teaching in the Outreach. “I thought it would be exciting,” one said. “Something different, a new challenge.”  

“In some ways, teaching in that program made me the best professor that I could be. You had to be able to apply your discipline to real-world situations.”

Sleeping accommodations, food and classrooms received mixed reviews from faculty. Dr. Mary Pike arrived at Alice Lloyd College to find no room reserved for her. Declining a well-intentioned suggestion that she simply share one with a gentleman visiting from Chicago, she was next offered an empty apartment up the road. Pike agreed, only to find that the apartment was truly empty—nothing there. She slept on the floor and used her coat as a blanket.  

Administrators, faculty, and staff shared numerous travel anecdotes. Most saw the Outreach as an adventure, but a few found it drudgery. Travel to Paducah and Pippa Passes required driving for up to five hours on beautiful yet isolated parkways or dark, narrow, winding rural roads, which caused some concern before cell phones and GPS. The drive home was often particularly difficult. 

“By 3 or 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, I was pretty brain-dead,” one faculty member shared. “I hated the drive,” said another. “I can remember so many times having to pull over to the rest stop and going to sleep because I was absolutely wasted.”  

Weather was also a concern. Dr. Joan Masters recalls being stranded in Ashland during a blizzard. She gathered all the change in her car and bought everything in the candy machine in the hotel lobby. Three days later, the National Guard pushed her car onto Interstate 64.  

Another faculty member recounted leaving Ashland and driving into an ice storm. Unable to find a hotel and passing numerous wrecked and abandoned cars, she drove 10 mph, finally arriving home early in the morning.  

Almost all the faculty interviewed discussed the fatigue that came from working all week, including teaching hospital clinicals, and then driving to an Outreach site on Friday. Pike recalled often working 14 days straight—teaching regular classes and clinicals Monday through Friday; the Outreach Friday and Saturday; and clinical assignments at Jewish Hospital on Sunday afternoon. 

In the early years of the Outreach, telephone calls and the U.S. Postal Service were the only modes of communication. Few students or faculty owned a computer or knew how to use one; there were numerous technological glitches and few resources for assistance. 

Even as technology became more prevalent, hospitals and colleges were slow to adapt. Hospitals often had just one staff member with computer expertise, and that person was rarely available on Friday evenings and Saturdays. 

Faculty found the level of teaching required by the Outreach program challenging, in a good way. One admitted having to “step up my game a little bit” because the nurses were quite experienced in clinical practice. “With a group of 20 to 30 adult learners, you have to put some steel in your spine.” 

Almost all faculty acknowledged that teaching in the Outreach forced them to become better organized, more resourceful, and more creative when planning courses. Some already used active-learning principles, but most had primarily taught by lecturing. They learned to engage students during the long class sessions using then-innovative activities such as sand trays, gaming, videos, role play, small-group work and field trips. 

Many faculty remembered the stress of having to remember every possible item one might need for a class, because there was no running back to the office to retrieve chalk or a three-prong plug. They also frequently had to take registration cards, financial-aid forms, catalogs and other paperwork to class for students to fill out, then return them to the appropriate Bellarmine offices.  

Staff in those offices had to revise traditional practices to accommodate students who were never on campus. For example, class stop-and-start dates varied because some faculty also taught weekend classes in Louisville. Books had to be mailed directly to students, and credit cards were accepted for the first time. Last-minute registrations, common in the Outreach, meant trying to acquire transcripts quickly for students who had often been out of school for many years and had attended several schools. 

Faculty said their experience in the Outreach changed their on-campus teaching. “In some ways, teaching in that program made me the best professor that I could be,” one said. “You had to be able to apply your discipline to real-world situations.”   

Dr. Barry Padgett, a former Bellarmine Philosophy professor, recalled that students weren’t initially interested in Philosophy. “But using their experiences, case studies in the news, etc., they grew to appreciate the liberal arts as a value,” he said. “They challenged me to give them something to help them be better in their daily lives.”