SCCCD honors MCC nursing director
For The Madera Tribune
Dr. Elizabeth Munoz-Day.
The State Center Community College District honored the 2021 Muro de Honor (Wall of Honor) inductees during a special ceremony.
This year’s inductees include Madera Community College assistant director of nursing Dr. Elizabeth Muñoz-Day RN, CHPN, CMSRN, in addition to Dr. Ray Ramírez and Dr. Mark Sanchez. The trio were inducted during a ceremony on Wednesday.
Dr. Ray Ramírez is the director of student equity and success at Fresno City College. Dr. Mark Sanchez served as the dean of student services at Fresno City College and is currently the superintendent/president of Southwestern College.
The Wall of Honor was established at Arte Americas in 2011. The Wall of Honor is sponsored by State Center Community College District and recognizes the contributions of outstanding Hispanic/Latinos.
Those inducted onto the Muro de Honor must have either attended or worked on behalf of State Center Community College District at one of its colleges, centers or District office. The District includes Fresno City College, Reedley College, Clovis Community College, Madera Community College, and Madera Community College at Oakhurst.
Dr. Elizabeth Munoz-Day
Dr. Elizabeth Muñoz-Day has been preparing future nurses at State Center Community College District for nearly 15 years. Initially, as faculty and department chair at Fresno City College in the Nursing Program and currently as the assistant director of nursing at Madera Community College.
Her passion is to decrease the disparity in health care and provide access to quality nursing education. Her unique style assists students with remembering difficult concepts by using games, songs and dances to remember heart rhythms and troubleshooting chest tubes. Plus, all of her 200-plus lectures can be found online for students to use as a resource. Her research focuses on delivering kindness and creating a healthy environment by role modeling “caring” in the curriculum.
Recently, the State Chancellor’s Office requested that she present a webinar on educating registered nurses online during a pandemic, which included creative ways to help nursing programs meet hands-on student clinical hours. She has been asked to present for several prestigious nursing organizations in San Diego, Georgia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Calgary Alberta Canada.
She serves on countless college committees: Academic Senate, Institutional Review Board, Madera/Oakhurst Faculty Association, Program Review, Curriculum Committee, Institutional Self Evaluation Report Standards, Student Learning Outcomes, Biology Tenured Faculty Evaluation Committee, and is a faculty advisor for the student nurses association at Madera Community College, to name a few.
Dr. Muñoz-Day was appointed to the Statewide Academic Senate Faculty Development Leadership Committee, serves on the Educational Advancement Scholarship panel for the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, Scholarship Committee for Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses, Executive Panel of the Central Valley Healthcare Summit, and was on the Steering Committee to begin the Sierra Foothills Hospice.
Dr. Muñoz-Day is the epitome of selflessness and heroism in the community. She has worked at the Holy Family Table Soup Kitchen and has each student nurse volunteer 30 hours a year at a local soup kitchen in Madera. She helped organize a coat drive and arranged for students to work with the DKMS organization to help delete blood cancer by holding a donor drive to add people to the registry.
In addition to being a mentor to multiple nursing students, she has served on scholarship committees. She is a true hero, when a passenger on her flight had a medical emergency, she sprang into action and saved that person’s life.
Dr. Muñoz-Day has won several local, state and national awards including the SCCCD Dr. Bill F. Stewart Award for Leadership and Excellence, Nurse Faculty of the Year, Innovision Award for Community Project: American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, and she was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. Twice, she has been one of five in the country to be chosen to receive the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Excellence in Caring Practice Award.
She worked with her family in the fields as a seasonal picker where Madera Community College now stands. At the age of 18, she joined the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman. Dr. Muñoz-Day earned her B.S. and M.S. in nursing from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing and her Ph.D. in nursing from University of Phoenix. In addition to being an R.N., she is certified as a hospice and palliative care nurse (CHPN) and a certified medical-surgical nurse (CMSRN).
