Meet St. Luke's Nurses.

HU:   Did you work anywhere before teaching at St. Luke’s? If so, what did you do?
DM:   After graduating from college, I worked for an ophthalmologist who performed cornea transplants at what is now Premier Medical Group.
Later I worked in the emergency department at Mobile Infirmary. While I was expecting our third child, I got out of nursing and worked in our family business for a number of years in marketing and systems training. It was then that I developed a passion for teaching.

HU:   Why did you want to work in a school?
DM:   The Head of School approached me one day and asked if I had ever considered going back to nursing. There was an opening for a school nurse here at St. Luke's and at that time I had four children enrolled here. I jumped at the opportunity to have the same schedule they had and get back into nursing. I was the school nurse here for seven years. Until about 3 years ago, many students still called me Nurse Diane. I feel old now that no one remembers when I did that! haha!

HU:   Why did you leave nursing and decide to teach?
DM:   That is a complicated question. When the school decided to pursue opening a high school, I was the nurse here. They asked if I would work that summer (2007) to help organize the campaign and assist with finding donors. Hence the beginning of the path that led to me becoming the Development Director here at St. Luke's. I never went back to being the school nurse after that because things got incredibly busy and all of my time was dedicated to helping raise the funds to open the University Campus. That first year, August 2009, we opened the upper school with only 6th - 9th grades. The Head of School at that time listened to my "pitch" to start a Biomed program to help students explore the idea of a career in the medical field. After extensive research, we discovered there were less than 12 such programs we could find anywhere in the United States. Everyone we talked to thought it was a novel idea and he allowed me to try it beginning with sophomores. The rest is history, this year is the 12th year of the program and the Biomed seniors will present the 9th Annual Capstone Presentations on Wednesday, April 13th at 6:00 p.m. in front of 250 - 400 people.

HU:   What’s your favorite thing about your job?
DM:   The students! I love getting to know them and helping them figure out what their interests are and what they might want to pursue in college and as a career. I also love that I get to learn so much from them and their research. I once had a physician mention to me that his son had traveled abroad and had developed a disease called bilharzia. I actually knew what that was!! The previous year one of my students had focused his study on neglected tropical diseases and bilharzia, also known as schistosomiasis, was the topic of his Capstone Presentation. The doctor said I was the only person he had ever said that to that knew what he was talking about. I quickly told him there were at least 400 other people in Mobile that know about it also because they heard the Biomed presentations earlier that spring!

HU:   If you could pass on any wisdom to students at your school, what would you share?
DM:   Come try out the Biomed program even if you don't think you want to pursue a degree or career in healthcare. It never hurt anyone to learn about the various professions they might encounter as a patient or family member of a patient. Plus, you never know what you might discover or get to do.) (think Biometrics, Canine CPR, Medical Physics, or job shadows in the ER, OR, or nursery)