On a frigid Friday afternoon in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the University of North Dakota's College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines marked a milestone: 74 new Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates received their ceremonial pins. The December 19 event in the Memorial Union Ballroom—complete with processional, land acknowledgement, and keynote from travel ER nurse Mallory Kostelecky—affirms a rite that binds these nurses to a lineage stretching back to 1951. In nursing, where burnout stalks the wards and shortages strain systems, such rituals steel resolve; they remind entrants that the badge on their chest carries history's weight.
A Symbol Forged in Postwar Resolve
The pin itself—gold with a green Maltese Cross—emerged from the hands of seven women in UND's inaugural nursing class. That 1951 cohort, part of the "Division of Nursing," chose green to echo university colors; the cross nodded to the Knights of St. John, medieval caregivers who decamped to Malta and etched their emblem into healing's iconography. Originally ringed by "School of Nursing," it evolved: "College of Nursing" in 1959, then "College of Nursing & Professional Disciplines" in 2012 to enfold social work and nutrition, and "UND Nursing" by 2014 as departments realigned.
What's striking here isn't just the tweaks—those reflect administrative churn—but the endurance. The Maltese Cross, stripped of overt religiosity over centuries, now stands for nursing's secular vow: health, care, competence amid chaos. For these graduates, pinning isn't theater; it's donning a talisman tested in pandemics and personnel crunches alike.
Ceremony's Steady Cadence
Dean Maridee Shogren, DNP, CNM, CLC, opened with a welcome, her words framing the room's gravity. Tracy Bergum emceed; Chantel Vazquez, a RAIN Nurse Mentor, read the land acknowledgement. Kostelecky's keynote—delivered as a BSN, RN, and Medical Service Officer—likely pierced the hush with frontline truths from ER travel shifts. Shogren then presented pins, announced by student council president Caroline Bodine, before Stephanie Christian, PhD, RN, closed as undergraduate nursing chair.
Process matters in these halls. UND's program, nestled in a state where rural clinics hunger for staff, churns out clinicians attuned to northern winters' toll—hypothermia calls, isolation's mental grind. The ritual bridges classroom to bedside, where one wrong call can unravel lives.
Grads Poised for Demanding Frontlines
Reece Anderson through Katie Young: that's the full roster, 74 names etched into UND's ledger. Alissa Hushagen, Riley Lembke, Skylar Wheeler—each now pins the cross that has steadied nurses through Vietnam drafts, AIDS crises, COVID surges. North Dakota's healthcare map, dotted with flyover towns, awaits them; the state's nurse shortfall mirrors national gaps, with rural voids hitting hardest.
To put it plainly, these pins signal readiness—not fanfare. They enter a field where evidence-based practice meets raw endurance; where social determinants like poverty or distance dictate outcomes more than any protocol. UND's lineage equips them for that fray, cross and all.
