Blog

We are coming off a two-year pandemic, where we were shut up in our houses, juggling work, kids, and their schoolwork, wearing masks forever and ever, and now there is the Ukraine-Russian war and high gas prices! Are you burnt-out or nearly burnt out? I know I’m struggling and I’m trained in how to help others be healthy. There is good stress and bad stress, but in the last three years there has been more bad stress than good. Thank goodness that historically, pandemics only come around every 100 years or so, so we hit the bottom of the barrel and now we’re climbing out.  But to survive, many of us developed bad eating habits during the pandemic.  As we climb past the pandemic, we still face the normal stresses of balancing school and family.

The NCU community lost one of its own last month with the passing of Dr. Cat Pausé. Dr. Cat, as she liked to be called, was a faculty member at NCU since 2007. She served on dissertation committees and taught courses including research methodology, gender and sexual fluidity, gerontology, and health psychology. Her academic and research interests included adult identity and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

While we are deeply saddened by her loss, we want to celebrate her life and the wonderful work she did during her lifetime.

Last fall, two outstanding women and American Business Women's Association members received a full-tuition scholarship to Northcentral University. One of them was Mary Lynn Konig, a commercial airline pilot. Mary Lynn shared with us why she wanted to go back to school and how she plans to change the world armed with her higher education.

By Valerie Radu, Program Director, Master of Social Work

Social work is a historic profession connected to the history of America – our roots go back to Hull House, one of the first settlement houses in America, founded in Chicago in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. Hull House programs included providing recreational facilities for poor children in the slums, fighting for child labor laws, literacy programs, and helping immigrants become U.S. citizens.