Trinity College Student Health Center Director, Martha Burke, ARPN Chosen for ACHA's New Professional Award

Martha Burke, ARPN, Director of Health Services at Trinity College in Hartford, CT was chosen to receive ACHA's 2002 New Professional Award. ACHA honored Martha and other award winners at a special luncheon at the Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Highly respected at Trinity, the following is an excerpt from the citation written by her Health Center colleagues. The complete citation can be found at

As Director of the Trinity College Health Center Martha Burke has distinguished herself through exceptional professional knowledge, management acumen, and leadership. Her creativity and sound guidance has transformed the Health Center into a first rate, comprehensive, primary care facility. Upon her arrival she undertook a comprehensive analysis of existing operations, identified opportunities for significant improvement, formulated a vision of what the health center could be, obtained endorsement from administration, and set a course for a top rate facility.

Her creation of an all nurse practitioner run college 'health center' reflected a new emphasis on health promotion as well as more comprehensive services and disease management. Within a year of your appearance on the scene, students were spreading the word that the health care provided at the revamped center was 'real' and 'legitimate'.

She leads a group of competent, talented individuals, which has preserved the independent roles of the nurses and consulting physicians, contributing to the high morale of your staff. The Health Center staff is stable, happy, and enjoys their work. Always attentive to their professional needs, she ensures that staff members are provided with appropriate referrals or consulting services, and needed equipment or medicine, as well as the time and funding to personally grow through attendance at conferences.

Always mindful of student confidentiality, her vision has included improving communications between the health center and other student service departments. She has greatly enhanced communications with the (historically very separate) counseling center and further championed a more collaborative relationship. Similar efforts have been directed towards the athletic training center.

From organizing the medical insurance program on campus and ensuring that it is both comprehensive and cost efficient, to working on the improving TCERT (Trinity College Emergency Response Team), to collaboration with Hartford Hospital and with prescription delivery services, your proactive, caring approach to working with students and administration has been exemplary. A strong leader and advocate for the growing health education program for students, you spearheaded the movement to create a smoke-free campus.

You have been professionally recognized by your election as President of the APRN group in the State of Connecticut.

Your expertise and vision have turned a fledgling medical office into a top rate Heath Care facility that has become the model for other colleges to emulate, as was evident when the ACHA featured Trinity as a model Health Center.

Your professionalism, ability to take an idea from concept to completion, to work collaboratively as a team, and to manage and lead with aplomb make you a deserving recipient of the first ACHA Affiliate New Professional Award representing the New England College Health Association.