Pam Eulberg

Four Years Later...

I get back to my office and the phone is ringing, new e-mails have arrived, and one of my employees pops her head into my office and says "Lydia wants to go on that FML whatever leave. Does she qualify and what paperwork do I need to fill out?" I had just reviewed a pro forma for next year's budget, looked over a contract from an outside vendor, and thought about a presentation I will need to make to our senior staff regarding a new product line I want to add to one of my departments ... and it's only 10:30am. I sit back in my chair and my first thought is "this isn't what I went to school for; at least not initially what I went to school to learn".

Following high school, I attended a diploma school of nursing. I was well prepared for changing dressings, giving injections and planning patient care, but not for budgets, business plans and employee relations. As my nursing career progressed, I was gradually promoted into different levels of management and had my greatest growth in the home care area, eventually becoming the Executive Director of a home care agency. As more was expected of me, I found myself struggling to complete my work. Being asked to do a quick SWOT analysis or to give input on a profit-and-loss review sounded like a foreign language to me. To be successful, I knew I needed to enhance my on-the-job experiences with the theory, knowledge, and training that only a formal business education would provide.

Re-entering school in my late 40's seemed daunting, and my initial perusal of graduate college information was confusing; most colleges only wanted another student to fill an opening. Attending a North Park School of Business and Nonprofit Management open house introduced me to a university that wanted me to succeed as an individual through meeting my needs. The small class sizes, real-life case studies used throughout the courses, access to professors and an underlying integration of ethics and morality throughout the program convinced me North Park was the best place for me to earn my graduate degree and I continue to feel this way even four years after graduation. I appreciated many things about my North Park education, but one of the most important was the experience of working with and learning from fellow professionals who were working in variety of organizations: corporate and nonprofit, manufacturing and service based, Fortune 500 and small entrepreneurial firms. I valued the diversity of ideas, the rich discussions, and the thought-provoking perspectives that that came from being part of a group of talented professionals from different backgrounds.

While at North Park, I changed employers and began working for Edward Hospital as the Director of home care, with oversight responsibility for two additional departments. In addition, I am the nursing leadership coach for the hospital-wide Nurse Practice Council.

It has been four years since I received my Master of Management degree and I can honestly say I utilize on a daily basis much of the knowledge I gained at North Park. Skills such as team building, coaching, leading by example, and conflict management have become an integral part of my daily job life. Even some of the economic formulas I continually complained about learning I now regularly use when reviewing reports generated by our business planning department! Skills learned in Organizational Behavior, Change Management, and Ethical Strategic Management were especially useful when I was assigned to manage a department I had very little knowledge about.

Coaching staff level nurses on how to develop a shared leadership program that includes representation from all hospital areas has been especially challenging. Referring back to courses in Managing Diversity and Conflict and Building High Performance Teams has been invaluable during this process. I even used the same team building exercises I learned at North Park with the nursing staff - we built bridges using paper plates, rubber bands, paperclips and pencils to encourage teamwork!

Did I learn everything I need to know to be successful in my career at North Park? Of course not. But in addition to the many useful skills and competencies I did gain at North Park are two other valuable lessons. The first is the ability to locate appropriate resources to help me in my job, and second, and most importantly, is the realization that there is so much more to learn; the best I can do for my employees and my employer is to continue learning and serving.