On Wednesday, April 20, the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities named David Page, MS, NREMT-P, a nationally recognized EMS educator and instructor at Inver Hills Community College, as Educator of the Year.
The award, announced as a special award luncheon, is given to faculty members to recognize their “exceptional individual professional accomplishment and to encourage ongoing excellence in teaching.” Candidates are selected by the Board of Trustees because they have demonstrated an outstanding ability to prepare students for “their professional, scholarly and civic lives.”
Page told attendees at the luncheon that he was “blessed to be at Inver Hills and have had such great opportunities to work with phenomenal students, faculty and staff.” He said was accepting the award on behalf of all of his paramedic and EMS instructor colleagues, not for himself.
“When the Inver Hills faculty as a team (including my friends and colleagues Kevin Johnson and Jeff Frederick) helped migrate the Ramsey hospital EMS program into the academic setting we wanted EMS students to receive the college credit they deserve. Our vision was that we would have a National Center of Excellence and prove that paramedic education deserved a degree.”
Page told the luncheon audience, including his wife Elizabeth and members of the Board of Trustees, that he was proud of having worked for two decades, trying to include an increased number of “students of diverse ethnicities so that the EMS workforce would be representative of the populations served.” Page said it was “a project we continue to struggle with, and will never give up.”
Page added, “I’m proud of our graduates working right now and who will be awake tonight, when others sleep, risking their lives to help others in need. In my mind, there could be no higher calling or more honorable profession than to have the privilege to help prepare future paramedics.”
Page authors the monthly JEMS column “Research Review”. He is also a field paramedic with Allina EMS in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and on the board of advisors for the UCLA Prehospital Care Research Forum.
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