By Kevin Foley Article published in The View September 18, 2007 Hundreds of migrant farm workers are living almost invisibly right now in just one Vermont county. They have traveled thousands of miles from their homes in rural Mexico to take better paying, albeit illegal, jobs in the states. They aren't supposed to be here, but they are. They can't afford to get sick, but they do. Addison County's rural public health infrastructure can't always meet the needs of locals, let alone the complex needs of migrant workers. In an effort to help, a small group of UVM master's re-entry students in nursing spent a month in and out of the classroom this summer studying ways to better connect migrants with existing services. In a Rowell classroom, group member Lauren Young stands to present her part of the work to Associate Professor Rycki Maltby's community public health nursing class. Young's normally cool voice wavers a little as she talks. She describes the oppressive fear: For these men, every car rattling down the gravel road is potentially immigration, and every sickness or injury requires a fraught series of cost-and-benefit calculations that end, usually, in ignoring the symptoms for as long as possible and then going to the emergency room in desperation. "There is just this unbelievable shroud of isolation," she says. Young and the rest of the group then describe how they tried to lift that shroud: The students translated and designed a bilingual health history form that an area free clinic had the grant, but not the time, to create; they organized two community health open houses, one at a Spanish-language mass, the other at a popular feed store's annual event (Addison farmers, like their migrant employees, don't always know all their options); and they pursued publicizing the free clinic's services via college radio and a statewide e-mail list for farmers. The group's project, one of five outreach efforts Maltby's graduate students pursued this summer, wasn't necessarily unusual. But what was novel was the intensity, resourcefulness and speed with which the students approached a problem. That kind of effort, nursing faculty say, typifies students in the UVM Master's Entry Program in Nursing, or MEPN, which enrolled its first class last fall. "(The MEPN students) were wonderful. They were motivated, they found resources, they talked to people - I didn't have to push. I was just the facilitator," Maltby says, explaining that her younger students usually require more active guidance. Giving up jobs, sleep Attracting mature students who know what they want and have some sense of how to get it is what MEPN's all about. Everyone in the program already has an undergraduate degree, and many have graduate credentials, even doctorates. The idea is to give these professionals a crash course in nursing, allowing them to become licensed and earn a master's degree in an advanced-practice specialty in as little as three years. Students don't have to have a science background. They do have to give up their jobs and a lot of sleep to shoulder the heavy course load. (Marie-Claire Smith, who left an influential staff job in UVM's diversity unit to enter the program, laughs at mention of the work. "It is unbelievable," she says.) Until recently, students like Smith and Young would have had to leave Vermont for training - or start college all over again to earn a second baccalaureate degree. MEPN is a difficult but more reasonable path. Students can meet nursing licensure requirements after one very intense year (this cohort celebrated doing that last week) and, within another 30 months, they will earn master's degrees. The opportunity is new to Vermont and has attracted top students. "They are an accomplished group, with previous careers ranging from a massage therapist to a cartographer to a veterinarian," says Sarah Abrams, assistant professor of nursing. "Some of them told us that, while they liked their previous jobs, there wasn't quite the right fit. They wanted to do more, to find lasting meaning and make a person-to-person contribution." Those ideas resonate with Lauren Young. Her goal, after years of studying and working at UVM in Burlington, is to finish her master's and work as a family nurse practitioner somewhere near her home in greater Middlebury. Young doesn't overstate the significance of the class project (it's the ongoing efforts of the clinic's core volunteers and supporters she admires), but she is pleased the group made a practical contribution, however modest, to help immigrants living in profound isolation. "We got the ball rolling on something that was just a piece of paper a month ago," she says. The larger context The ability to put ideas into motion, Abrams says, is something MEPN students generally share, despite their diverse ages and backgrounds. She ties leadership skill to the larger issues in nursing that she and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences hope the program might begin to address. The growing nationwide shortage of nurses is familiar news; a less well known critical ongoing shortfall is for nursing faculty. If MEPN establishes itself at UVM, it might help relieve both problems in Vermont. Abrams says her college works hard to cultivate research skills and leadership potential in all of its students, but adds that the re-entry students are special. "I bet you some significant number of these people will become faculty within 10 years. A decade from now, having people who have been community leaders return and teach the next generation is really important," she says. "(MEPN) brings breadth to the profession that can't be duplicated by people who have only been educated as nurses". For more information please visit The View at www.uvm.edu/theview