KSTP-5 Eyewitness News spoke with Dean MayKao Hang and students when it toured the new Susan S. Morrison School of Nursing. With 50 students enrolled this fall, the newest school at the University of St. Thomas aims to diversify its student body as the program grows. Currently one-third are nursing students of color, with 19% being men.
From the article: “We want to attract people who are underrepresented and historically excluded from the profession, so students of color, students from rural Minnesota, students who are first-generation,” said MayKao Hang, founding dean of the Morrison Family College of Health at the University of St. Thomas. “I’m the founding dean now, but I was just a refugee kid. We want students from all walks of life.”
“We’re trying to create something that’s original,” Hang said. “We need to see the people we have in front of us, of course with science-based evidence in terms of treatment and care, but we have to understand the mental, the physical, the social and the spiritual every time we look at a human being. And that’s what we’re really missing from health care. We have to look at the whole human being in all of their dignity and worth.”
