Monthly Archives: January 2012

Throwing Bales and Programming Computers: Life on the Farm in the 21st Century

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Vendor at Ridgewater Career Fair

Traci Seifert with Land O' Lakes discusses career opportunities with a student at the 2012 Ridgewater Ag Career Fair and Technology Showcase.

What do you think of when you imagine a career as a farmer:  Scooping manure? Mending fences? Throwing bales?  Maybe there’s some of that, but as over 300 hig

 

h school and college students learned at Ridgewater College on Friday, careers in today’s agriculture industry are more technologically advanced and exciting than ever before.

Ridgewater’s 220 Agriculture program students were joined by over 125 high school students from over 13 Minnesota high schools at Ridgewater’s Willmar campus for an Agriculture Career Fair and Technology Showcase.  The event featured exhibits from around 35 industry employers from across the region, who put on seminars for students, talked with them about career opportunities, and even did some interviewing.

While the Ridgewater Ag department has hosted career fairs for their students in the past, this was the first time all the college ag students participated. It was also the first time that businesses had the opportunity to set up trade-show style exhibits, and the first time high school ag students were invited. 

Many businesses were able to talk to the students about the opportunities in today’s agriculture industry, including precision agriculture, seed genetics, advanced livestock feeding systems, and livestock nutrition just to name a few. 

So while your vision of a career in agriculture may include cleaning barns and riding the hay wagon, most of today’s agriculture employees are considering the impact of yield by switching to the latest hybrid seed, or programming the GPS field mapping software on their tractor.  Indeed, the way look at agriculture has changed, but the future of the industry couldn’t be more exciting!

Interested in knowing more about careers in agriculture?  Simply call us at Ridgewater College and we’ll schedule a visit to campus!

Critical Care Paramedic Program at Ridgewater Aims to Provide Advanced Training to Region’s Paramedics

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You’ve heard of the “golden years”, but are you familiar with the “golden hour”?  In traumatic and medical emergencies, the “golden hour” is a window of time in which delivery of proper medical care can make a significant difference in whether a patient lives or dies. In rural areas such as central and west central Minnesota, where response and transport times in emergency situations may be longer than in heavily populated areas, well-trained emergency medical service personnel become a critical component in making the most of the “golden hour”.

Thanks to a ten thousand dollar grant from the United Way of Kandiyohi County, Ridgewater College is launching a new Critical Care Paramedic (CCP) program.  Building upon a strong history of training Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics in central Minnesota, Ridgewater’s CCP program provide access for practicing paramedics and emergency room personnel to a fully-accredited critical care paramedic training program, enabling them to achieve a nationally-recognized certification as a Critical Care Paramedic.

Paramedics and other medical personnel who choose to pursue certification as a Critical Care Paramedic will build upon their current training and skill levels.  The CCP program will emphasize an advanced and in-depth understanding of illness and injuries of the pediatric, adult, and geriatric patient.  Specifically, a CCP:

  • Will have a greater ability for more concise differential diagnosis
  • Can perform rapid sequence induction (sedate and paralyze a patient for placement of a breathing tube)
  • Can perform retrograde intubation (insert a breathing tube when the patient has had extensive facial trauma)
  • Can perform a surgical cricothyrotomy (surgical airway)
  • Will have the ability to set up operating parameters for mechanical ventilation
  • Can perform sutures
  • Can insert a central IV line in the jugular or subclavian vein for massive trauma or cardiac patient with collapsed veins
  • Can hang and start blood product for transfusion
  • Can interpret 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG) in a cardiac emergency
  • Can assess and manage implanted cardiac defibrillators, pacemakers, and intra-aortic balloon pumps

In addition, a CCP is trained to recognize and manage the special needs of pediatric and geriatric patients, including shock, pain, and breathing, which can be harder to identify and diagnose in these populations.

The United Way grant will enable the college to purchase the program curriculum from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which is the only nationally-recognized and certified program in the nation.  Ridgewater will provide the classroom portion of the training, and the clinical portion of the training will be delivered at Hennepin County Medical Center, expanding on the college’s current partnership with them in delivering the standard Acute Care Paramedic program. The grant will also pay for the travel expenses for CCP examiners to come from the University of Maryland to oversee the testing portion of the training.

More than a dozen current paramedics will participate in the initial cohort, including professionals from the Willmar Ambulance Service and several other local ambulance services.  In addition, Ridgewater has a core instructor that will proctor the program and two other instructors will participate to earn their CCP instructor certification.

This will be the only program in Minnesota through which paramedics can earn nationally-recognized certification as a Critical Care Paramedic. The closest program currently is in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  By placing student resources online and incorporating use of the college’s mobile simulation training vehicle, SimLab L1, Ridgewater’s CCP program will be a viable option for paramedics employed virtually anywhere in the state and region.

Initially, the program will cost students $1,000, and is delivered through Ridgewater’s Customized Training and Continuing Education department as an hour-based program.  As the program grows and develops, the college will examine the possibility of advancing the program to a credit-based certificate program.

All emergency patients will benefit by having a greater number of CCPs in the region, but the most critically ill and injured will see the greatest benefits from this advanced training.  The most critical patients, after assessment and stabilization at the nearest hospital, are often transferred to a tertiary care facility in St. Cloud or the Twin Cities.  This is accomplished by:

  1. Flying the patient in a CCP-staffed helicopter. 
  2. Transporting the patient by local ambulanced staffed by a CCP. 

Ultimately, the CCP program will enable the already well-trained ambulance services of the region to save even more lives, while reducing the costs to the patient and insurance companies, and keeping the funds in local economies.

Rice Health Foundation and Ridgewater College Team Up to Help Save Lives

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Code Blue Team Leadership TrainingYou feel pain in your left arm, the sensation of pressure on your chest, and shortness of breath.  You are having a heart attack.  You are “code blue” to the emergency medical personnel who are on their way to treat you – to save your life.

Heart attacks are the number one cause of premature death in America, and 44.2 percent of Kandiyohi County residents are age 45 and older – an age where risk of heart attacks begins to rise significantly.  We are indeed blessed to have well trained and dedicated emergency medical personnel in our region.

Now, in partnership with Ridgewater College, 200 healthcare professionals in Kandiyohi County are taking their training in cardiac care to the next level.

Thanks to $24,000 grant from the Rice Health Foundation, Ridgewater is delivering its Code Blue Team Leadership training to the Rice Hospital system in Kandiyohi County. Ridgewater Customized Training and Continuing Education has been delivering the CBTL training to healthcare personnel for three years, but this is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that will document the results of a system-wide cardiac care training initiative.

Participating in the training will be Rice Hospital Emergency staff, Atwater Fire and Ambulance, New London Ambulance, Raymond Ambulance, Sunburg Ambulance, Willmar Ambulance, Bethesda Pleasantview, and Rice Care Center.

Code Blue Team Leadership uses a high fidelity simulation manikin to create a life-like cardiac event scenario, allowing health care providers the opportunity to practice, identify, record and evaluate each process, procedure, obstacle, and challenge that they may encounter while treating a cardiac event patient.

“It’s facilitated self-discovery,” notes Ron Flannigan, Ridgewater Code Blue Team Leadership instructor. “We help design a functional work space for each person on the team by eliminating physical and procedural obstacles, thereby helping each person on the team achieve ‘perfection’ per benchmarks established by the American Heart Association.”

The project will deliver thirty-eight 2-hour training sessions, beginning with a mock 911 call, and will involve a complete “full through” cardiac patient session from the patient’s residence to the Basic Life Support ambulance, to the Advanced Life Support ambulance, to the hospital, and finally to the rehab center.  Each step and exchange will be observed, critiqued, and repeated with procedural and process adjustments implemented for each department and individual.  The facilitated adjustments that improve efficiency and effectiveness will be replicated in subsequent sessions.

What is the significance of all this?  Initial results of CBTL training have shown significant improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of cardiac life support providers measured against benchmarks established by the AHA.  In fact, the stated goals of the project include potentially saving lives and impacting cardiac survival outcomes in our area by 20%, and greatly improving the quality of life for those surviving cardiac episodes. The bottom line – lives are being saved.

Going “Green” on Campus

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“Going Green” on college campuses has been grabbing headlines for the past few years, and for good reason.  New technologies and products are allowing college administrators and facilities managers to not only to reduce their impact on the environment, but also to realize tremendous cost savings for the institution, the students, and the taxpayers.  Those cost savings come in many forms, most notably in energy savings and reduction of time and labor from maintenance personnel and contractors.

Fiscal Year 2011 saw the completion of two large facilities projects at Ridgewater’s Willmar campus; the implementation of a new central heating plant, and a lighting retrofit covering half of campus.  In and of themselves, the projects don’t sound very exciting, but the impact is impressive.

The new central heating plant replaced 5 outdated, inefficient boilers with new, efficient condensing boilers.  This move resulted in rebates from energy providers in excess of $100,000, in addition to an estimated operational cost savings of over 30%! 

Retrofitting campus light fixtures and switching to more efficient, lower-wattage bulbs is estimated to result in an estimated energy savings of 10-15% of the cost to illuminate the campus.

Impressive, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Take a broader look at how Ridgewater is committed to “going green”:

  • Radiant heat installed in some large shop areas.  This heats the masses inside the classroom (tables, chairs, etc.) instead of just the air, resulting in less heat loss when large overhead doors need to be opened.
  • Green cleaning products.  The cleaning products used on the Hutchinson campus are 80% “green”.  The Willmar campus has achieved a level of 65%.  Facilities managers are continually monitoring for additional ways to use green products in keeping campus clean.
  • Renewable fuel use in college vehicles. Outdoor maintenance equipment runs on bio-diesel during warm weather periods when possible, and all college vehicles are required to refuel with E85 when available.
  • Broad recycling efforts. Yard waste from campus groundskeepers is composted; receptacles for recyclable materials such as plastic, cardboard, paper, and aluminum are conveniently located around campus; carpet and ceiling tiles are recycled during remodeling projects; and rags used in the automotive service technology program are recycled.
  • Lighting improvements. In addition to major lighting retrofitting projects, other lighting improvements are helping to reduce energy consumption.  All exit lighting has moved from incandescent bulbs to LED’s, and newly remodeled or added classrooms and offices are equipped with occupancy sensors to automatically turn lights off when a room is not in use.
  • Energy management.  The Willmar campus participates in “load shed” programs through the local utility company, helping to save thousands of dollars per year in energy usage.  The Hutchinson campus has signed on to a PBEEE Project to monitor energy usage and make recommendations for energy reduction. Large spaces on campus also use CO2 sensors to only allow air handlers to bring in outside air when needed, avoiding unnecessary heating and cooling of outside air.

This is just a brief look at all the ways that Ridgewater is working diligently to be environmentally friendly and reduce energy consumption.  A number of other projects are being considered that will surely have considerable impact for the future.