WCU Alumni Come Together to Honor Men in Nursing

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The West Coast University Alumni Network hosted WCU-Ontario chapter of the American Association of Men in Nursing (AAMN) for a networking dinner at Rossa’s Cucina Enoteca on June 24. Alumni and current students from the WCU-Ontario campus attended to mingle, eat and listen to the national AAMN president speak.

Jennifer Tate, who graduated with her BSN in 2019 and now works as a labor and delivery nurse with Riverside Community Hospital, said she tries to come to as many Alumni Network events as she can. She said it was important to her to get the word out about West Coast University and she also appreciated the opportunity to support her male colleagues in the nursing industry.

“When you think of nurses you automatically think of women. It’s a female-dominated industry. We need to encourage more men to come into the field. Men have so much to offer. It’s a whole different outlook into the nursing field,” Tate said.

Several WCU graduates said they were attending an alumni event for the first time. Argishty Babakhanyan, who completed his BSN with WCU-Los Angeles in 2016, said it was always good to meet new people but even better to bond with the next generation of nurses from WCU.

“I don’t know anybody here,” Babakhanyan said, “so it’s good meeting nurses that graduated just recently or when I graduated but from different campuses, asking where they are, what they’re doing.”

Class of 2018 BSN graduate Bryan Ishigami, who is a neuroscience/trauma ICU nurse at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, was also attending his first WCU Alumni event but said it won’t be his last.

“I’ve talked to a couple of people that have just recently graduated, so knowing what that process is and just having gone through that process, if I could help them out then that’s kind of my way to pay it forward,” Ishigami said. 

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