The Nursing Department at Southwest Tennessee Community College will present its Fall 2001 Pinning Ceremony at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, December 15, in the sanctuary of Liberty Memorial Baptist Church, 4170 Germantown Road Ext. Virginia Trotter Betts, Director for Health Policy and Professor of Nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, is the keynote speaker. The ceremony is free and open to the public.

Betts formerly served as the Senior Advisor on Nursing and Policy for the U.S. Secretary of Health. Her duties included advising the Secretary and other Department of Health and Human Services officials on matters of federal legislation, regulation and administrative processes that impact nursing. She is the past president of the American Nurses Association, having served two terms from 1992-1996.

A graduate of the University of Tennessee, the Vanderbilt School of Nursing and the Nashville School of Law, Betts is one of only 12 nurses to have been named a recipient of the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship. She has been involved in the health care arena as a psychiatric mental health nurse, attorney, administrator, educator and researcher.

More than 50 of Southwest's nursing students will be honored following Betts' address. These students will be saluted for having completed their requirements for graduation.

In 1979, Southwest's Nursing Program was established at what is now the Union Avenue Campus of the College. Southwest Tennessee Community College has developed formal partnerships with the nursing programs at the University of Memphis, Baptist College of Health Sciences, Union University and the College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center.