Michele (Taylor) Regehr, RN
They say what goes around comes around., Sometimes, like in the case of Michele (Taylor) Regehr, RN—Campus Nurse and Associate Director of Wellness, Health Services—it just takes a bit of time.
Nursing was the furthest thing from the music major’s mind when she enrolled at Trinity Western College in 1980. She faced many of the challenges students do today, like meeting education costs. In her second year, an anonymous donor covered her expenses—a gift she’s still grateful for. “I think my own experience gives me a sensitivity to what our students experience,” she says.
After second year, Regehr landed a summer job at a nursing home. “It was that or waitressing,” she laughs, “and the nursing home paid better.” The experience changed everything—she enrolled in nursing school, eventually becoming a registered nurse.
Regehr has been back since 2007, thanks to a call from Wellness Centre Director Kurt Lundberg, a friend from her TWU days, who felt she was just what the doctor ordered.
In addition to her position at TWU, Regehr works in Abbotsford Hospital’s intensive care unit and has done medical relief work in Haiti and Indonesia. She and her family have “adopted” third-year nursing student, Sureyah Tach, a Cambodian orphan. “Having Sureyah with us has been such a blessing,” says Regehr. “He truly has become part of our family.”
Although she didn’t get her degree here (TWU’s renowned nursing program didn’t exist at the time), Regehr did meet her husband. She and Timothy (’83) married shortly after he graduated with his aviation degree. “TWU didn’t make me a nurse, but the faculty, staff, and students built into me as a person,” she says. “The school was distinctive then and it is now. I see it in my life and in the lives of our students.”
by Wendy Delamont Lees
