Your future, our focus
Northwest College will be holding a pair of special ceremonies on May 6 and May 13 to honor the 2022 graduates of the paramedic and nursing programs. The Paramedic Coining Ceremony is scheduled for Friday, May 6, at 10:00 a.m. in the Yellowstone Building Conference Center, and the RN Pinning Ceremony is scheduled for Friday, May 13, at 3:00 p.m. in the Nelson Performing Arts Auditorium. Both events are open to the public.
The Coining Ceremony will recognize the inaugural cohort of the NWC Paramedic program, which began in the fall of 2020. The ceremony is based on a tradition passed down from the military, with graduates receiving a Northwest College-specific coin to carry for their career. Possessing the challenge coin signifies their membership in a select group of people who have graduated from the Northwest College Paramedic program.
The inaugural class of graduates includes Kaylena Atnip (Cody), Bianca Chavez (Cody), Matthew Hetzel (Evanston), Patrick Northrup (Powell), Lacey Taylor (Burlington), and Michelle Vaughn (Cody).
The Pinning Ceremony, which is held at the end of each semester, serves as a symbolic welcoming of newly graduated nurses into the profession and traces its origins back to the 12th century. Graduates of the program are traditionally presented with nursing pins by either the faculty or someone significant to the person receiving the pin. The ceremony also includes a candle-lighting, and the reciting of the Nightingale Pledge, a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath named for the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
The Pinning Ceremony will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/NorthWestCollege or facebook.com/NorthwestCollegeWyo.