Nursing students can expect cross-faculty events and healthcare guest speakers next year under the new executive.
The Nursing Science Society (NSS) met to ratify the new executive team, Holly Burrows, NSS president-elect, Nurs ’25, Victoria Mihaylova, NSS vice-president (operations)-elect, Nurs ’25, and Hannah Latimer, NSS vice-president (university affairs)-elect, Nurs ’26, on Nov. 29 in Mitchell Hall.
Prior to their ratification, the executive team described the three pillars of their leadership campaign to NSS : promoting the NSS to increase student engagement, facilitating students’ relationships with industry professionals, and promoting inter-year connections.
Student engagement starts with filling NSS positions. Burrows explained the team will combat vacancies within NSS positions by promoting the society during Orientation week.
Latimer believes the NSS has successfully fostered connections between faculties, citing the nurses versus engineering trivia night. Through promoting inter-faculty events on the NSS social media, Latimer hopes to continue building those relationships, particularly with the Faculty of Health Sciences.
“We want people to know what the NSS does,” Latimer said during the meeting. “We will try to be active on social media and ensure people know we are here to talk.”
Mihaylova is the current speaker of NSS Assembly. For her, open communication between NSS and the executive team is key. She wants to have an open forum where nursing students can speak directly to her.
“I want to have a forum for understanding why an idea should be added or changed,” Mihaylova added.
Mihaylova hopes to have guest speakers, including nursing faculty, at every NSS Assembly meeting next year. Increasing faculty awareness of the NSS and building student-professor relationships remains a key goal for the new executive.
Burrows acknowledged not everyone is going to agree with the executives’ decisions, but wants on the team’s progress. While receiving pushback can be stressful, Latimer has the tools to deal with it, and described to NSS a time when she lost a leading member of her orientation group and had to step up to bring the team together.
“We were all very stressed. [I took the] initial steps towards improving things and fostering a positive environment,” Latimer said.
The executives feel they have big shoes to fill following the departure of the 2023 NSS executive team, and underscored the attitude they plan to adopt as they assume their roles.
“We’re ecstatic to be in positions for the Queen’s nursing community. We have such iration for our nursing peers and faculty and the profession as a whole. We strive to build on the previous success of the NSS and have many exciting opportunities awaiting,” Mihaylova said.
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