The team toured ACC’s Ruth C. Julian Hall of Health Sciences — commonly known as the nursing wing — to meet students and staff who are part of a collaborative program between Saginaw Valley State University and ACC.

When Gilchrist met a group of students finishing a lesson in their nursing summer class, he asked them, “What kind of a nurse do you want to be?”

“A good one,” a student chimed in, to a burst of laughter in the classroom.

“What I’m really struck by is seeing state-of-the-art tools, state-of-the-art tech matched with enthusiastic students,” Gilchrist said. “We know we need more nursing professionals. And so it’s important to us to find all the ways we can to support getting more people in that pipeline. I wanted to come see it for myself.”

News Photo by Michael Gonzalez Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist chats with nursing students alongside Alpena Community College Director of Nursing Kelli Leask at the college's nursing wing on Thursday afternoon.

Gilchrist and his team, prior to visiting ACC, toured Saginaw Valley earlier in the day and got to see both aspects of the partnership program. During his visit to ACC, Gilchrist saw the various nursing labs and received firsthand lessons from students who guided him on how to use a stethoscope on a multi-functional patient dummy.

After his tour, Gilchrist talked with ACC President Don MacMaster about one of the biggest issues that could possibly buffer the nursing program’s success: housing in Alpena.

“Talking with President MacMaster, one of the bottlenecks to increasing the number of students who can come through this nursing program or others is access to a diverse array of affordable housing,” Gilchrist said. “We have now invested over the last two and a half years about $250 million of state money into affordable housing … and we’re gonna invest more. And so that’s the biggest investment in affordable housing that’s happened in Michigan in 60 years, at least.”

Gilchrist also commented during his visit about state and federal investment in increasing broadband to rural parts of Michigan.

He said four challenges for the state is that residents in those areas may not have access to high-speed internet because they physically don’t have access, the access is not affordable, or the access people have is not good enough to use the modern internet.

News Photo by Michael Gonzalez Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist attempts to listen to a patient dummy's heart through a stethoscope in one of Alpena Community College’s nursing labs on Thursday.

Because of a partnership between the Michigan government and the federal government, Gilchrist said, officials are “on track to be the first large state to connect all of our people to high-speed internet they can afford.

“I’m very excited about this,” Gilchrist added. “And this is something that animated my public service as part of why I went into public service was to connect our people. And I think we have a big opportunity to do that, which will make a huge generational impact.”

Gilchrist said the project is on pace to hit this goal over the next four years.

After the visit to ACC, Gilchrist and his team made its way toward an Alpena community and business roundtable as well as stops in Rogers City and Cheboygan.

News Photo by Michael Gonzalez Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and nursing faculty member Terry McKenzie on Thursday hear that Alpena Community College’s Oscoda campus has access to a high-tech medical device called Anatomage in the nursing wing.

News Photo by Michael Gonzalez From left, Eric Keller, Senior Advisor of the Office of Community Engagement, Victor Morgan, of MyMichigan Health, Alpena Community College President Don MacMaster, and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist on Thursday start their tour of the nursing wing at the entrance of ACC’s Van Lare Hall.