The Job

Day: 326
High Temp: 89F

The cool thing about my job at UT is that it is one part Education and one part social services.  Having spent the first several years of my career fundraising in the arts, I thought this would be a great opportunity to diversify my experience and resume.  This position has allowed me to learn a ton about endowments and the funding of academic programming. It has also allowed me the special joy of fundraising to provide direct healthcare services to the under and uninsured of central Texas through our two nurse-managed health clinics.

Yesterday afternoon I had my first chance to visit the School of Nursing's Children's Wellness Center (CWC), which is located in a rural and poor area of Travis County called Del Valle.  Completely bereft of basic services (there is not a grocery store in Del Valle, and our clinic is the only primary health provider for miles) Del Valle almost seems forgotten by Travis County. It is also plagued by a special set of problems that must be unique to a poor rural community situated not 15 minutes from the "major urban area" that is downtown Austin (obesity, asthma, gang violence).

Every day, our clinic provides health services primarily for children, but also for their families if they have no where else to go.  We serve a population of over 1,000 children under the age of 18, providing physical exams, treatment of acute illnesses, social and behavioral interventions and hundreds of free immunizations.

I was at CWC yesterday in preparation for an event we are hosting there in a few weeks. The entire clinic used to be situated in two modular buildings, but recently the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (yes, that Dell) gave us a large grant to renovate a third building. This renovation allowed us to create an expanded lab and new nurses stations and most exciting of all, it doubled the number of patient rooms we have at the clinic. Of course, thanks are in order, and so we are all trucking out to Del Valle in a few weeks to show the people from the Dell Foundation all the good they did with their recent grant and to thank them.

Settling in to the School of Nursing has been hard for me, but this visit helped me reconnect with an important aspect of the work we are accomplishing every day (aside from educating all those future nurses which is also cool).  Certainly, I miss working in the arts. But also my boss and I are both new, and we are operating under an interim Dean. Everyone wants to move forward, but until a permanent Dean is appointed, it will be hard to do.  I have been feeling a little like I am playing a waiting game, anticipating the appointment of a permanent Dean, and the unveiling of new strategies and goals for the school. Until then, we are just sort of carrying on. The Clinics, however, are still growing and it is exciting to see that happening.