Schneck Medical Center’s patient-first philosophy guides every decision made.
The most recent upgrade at the Seymour hospital fits that mission.
The third-floor med-surg unit, known as 3 North, was remodeled, and it opened to the first patients Jan. 28.
The project was among those receiving Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative funding. The South Central Indiana Talent Region was awarded $30 million to use for projects in Jackson, Bartholomew and Jennings counties and Edinburgh.
After a tour for South Central Indiana Talent Region officials Jan. 27, Schneck President and CEO Dr. Eric Fish thanked those who made the project possible.
He said he appreciates the desire of state and local officials to invest in communities.
“I think this is a very good testament to that vision, and I just appreciate all of the work of you guys bringing this and doing the hard work that I know it is to get it to be successful in our area, so thank you all. It’s a beautiful space. They’ve done a great job,” Fish said.
“We’re glad to have been able to help you guys be part of that program,” said Dan Davis, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Jackson County and member of the South Central Indiana Talent Region team. “It’s been great hearing how excited everybody is about (opening).”
JCIDC Executive Director Jim Plump, Workforce Director Jackie Hill and board member Matt Nicholson also are members of that team.
Amy Pettit, Schneck’s vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer, led the tour with the assistance of nursing and facilities staff.
“We’re super excited about the space and looking forward to (opening),” she said. “We’ll be having our first patients admitted to this space, so that’s every exciting. We have a plan and a process for that, so all of the staff is very excited.”
The newly renovated third floor features 20 suites for medical and surgical patients of all ages, from babies to adults.
One is Americans with Disabilities Act compliant and allows for wheelchair access in the room and bathroom. It includes a lift that can accommodate up to 1,100 pounds.
Next door is a room that accommodates larger patients.
There also are three corner suites that are bigger to allow for a patient with multiple visitors and equipment.
“A lot of times, we’ll admit hospice respite patients or inpatient hospice where they are needing maybe symptom management during their hospital stay, and these rooms just allow for that extra room for family members, caregivers, anyone who may be coming in and out,” Pettit said.
Each patient room’s lights can be adjusted by a touchpad on the wall or the bed.
“Very patient-friendly, trying to look at the room from the patient point of view and say, ‘If I were a patient, what would I want to have? I already don’t feel good. I’m in the hospital,’” Pettit said. “What can we do to make that environment more soothing without the bright lights? The ability to dim them, that type of thing.”
The patient suites also have monitoring, surveillance cameras, medical air and dialysis hookup. There also is a waiting room with sound-dampening walls that reduce the noise from the unit.
For the staff, there are two identical nurse’s stations. Previously, there was just one small one on the floor.
They both feature a doctor dictation area and a tube system, which allows transporting of lab draws and medication between the nurses, pharmacy and lab.
“That’s something the med-surg floor has not had in the past and is a great addition,” Pettit said of the tube system.
A larger clean storage and medication room also is new to the unit. There are doors on each side of the centrally located room for access from both hallways.
Pettit said the hospital’s Lean Six Sigma department partnered with the unit to improve efficiency and decrease waste. The result was a color-coded two-bin system to ensure supplies are organized and remain in stock.
Staff members also have their own area that requires badge access with lockers, a kitchen, a breakroom and a bathroom.
The breakroom has windows, which is a new feature that was made possible by working with the architect and hospital facilities staff members Jason Fee and Cody Moore.
“Every patient room has to have an outside window, so a lot of times, the areas for staff tend to be in the core,” Pettit said. “We’ve been able to secure some space for staff that has those windows so that you can actually get to an area where you can take a break and actually see outside. That’s always a positive thing.”
Pediatric patients can stay on the third floor thanks to a new baby security system that requires staff badge access for the stairwell.
Also for those young patients, there is an activity room, where a variety of activities can take place to get them out of their hospital room.
Moore said construction of the hospital’s patient rooms started in 1968 and was completed in 1971, and changes weren’t made until the 1990s.
Around that time, Pettit said the third floor was for women and children, but after that unit was moved up to the fifth floor, it became a medical floor.
Fee said the third floor was last updated in 2007, but that only included some finishes and mechanical systems.
The recent project was the first time the footprint of the floor changed.
“I think they’ve done a fantastic job of really opening the space while trying to keep the number of beds consistent, which was important because we have to still be able to care for patients. That’s our No. 1 goal,” Pettit said. “If you need us, we can be here, and we’ll take care of you.”
The public is invited to a VEX IQ Robotics tournament Feb. 1 at Immanuel Lutheran School in Seymour.
This tournament is unique because it will feature all Jackson County schools. There will be nearly 50 elementary and middle school teams competing, starting at 9 a.m. The tournament champions of each division — elementary school and middle school — will qualify for the 2025 Indiana Robotics State Championship on March 22 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.
There is no admission charge, so you are encouraged to come by and check out the competition.
One local robotics team recently qualified for the 2025 Indiana Robotics State Championship.
Another one won an award for the second time this season.
During a VEX Robotics tournament Jan. 18 at Immanuel Lutheran School in Seymour, Trinity Lutheran High School’s Team 1483C won all of its matches and the tournament to earn a trip to the state competition, which is March 22 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.
“They competed very well. They didn’t lose a single match the whole tournament! And congratulations to the whole Trinity robotics team, who all did awesome this weekend,” said a post on the Trinity Lutheran Robotic Facebook page.
The team consists of Nolan Tiepen, Rylan Adair, Lincoln Huff and Jacob Lorenz. Earlier this season, the team placed 12th at a tournament in Fort Wayne and second at a tournament in Seymour.
Also during the recent tournament at Immanuel, Seymour High School’s Team 31330C earned the Innovate Award for the second time this season.
The award recognizes an effective and well-documented design process for a novel aspect of a team’s robot design or gameplay strategy. The submission of an engineering notebook is a requirement for the Innovate Award, and the team that earns the award also should be among the top contenders for the Design Award.
An interview with the judges and gameplay observation by the judges during the tournament also played into the award.
“We are so proud of this team that consistently brings strategy, teamwork and increased abilities to the whole team and our SMS teams,” coach Amy Miller Kuzel said in a post on the Seymour High School Robotics Facebook page. “They not only inspire themselves to stay motivated, do what is right and progressively improve. They inspire all teams they connect with.”
Team members competing at the tournament were Leo Holle, Nikita Cox and Kellan Stanfield.
“Team 31330C brings their A game every competition,” Miller Kuzel said. “Watching Kellan intensely programming in the pits stood out along with the whole team networking the room, scoping out competition and strategy. I am so proud of the example they are providing to all teams.”
This semester, JCIDC is excited to have Seymour High School senior Parker Thompson on staff as an intern.
Through the school’s Work Based Learning program, he will spend part of each weekday working in our office for the second semester after spending the first semester at Valeo in Seymour.
He will see how we work with local industries and promote development, and he also will learn how the Workforce Partnership works with local schools and the community to offer programs for students. We already have discussed potential projects for Parker so he will be able to take ownership of them and take that experience with him as he moves forward in life.
Parker said he wants to learn about what JCIDC does and how the organization interacts with companies around Jackson County.
“Indiana University is where I think I’m going to go, and I believe I want to do something business management-related, and I think this could confirm or deny it,” he said.
Parker is a three-sport athlete at SHS, and after graduation, he plans to study business management and get accepted into the IU Kelley School of Business.
“My dad, he has been a part of that for his entire life. That’s what he majored in, so I thought that sounded interesting,” Parker said of choosing a college major.
In terms of choosing a college, he said, “I’ve always been an IU fan. Bloomington, it’s a great city. I went to IU games. It’s just a cool campus.”
Parker is the son of Matt and Kara Thompson. He has a younger brother, Dane Thompson, who is a freshman at SHS. Both brothers play tennis, basketball and baseball for the Owls.
More than 600 eighth graders from around Jackson County attended the Reality Fair on Dec. 6 at Seymour Middle School.
A Reality Fair is a simulation of an adult’s financial life that allows youth to experience making financial decisions and managing money. They can experience what it is like to manage an account at a financial institution, make money-related decisions, obtain a loan, manage debt and more. For the youth, a Reality Fair can be an eye-opening, exciting and fun way to build financial knowledge and skills.
After being assigned one of 18 different types of jobs, they visited 12 booths: Pets, health care, transportation, housing Part 1, housing Part 2, household spending, the unexpected, credit card, bank, sharing and charitable gifts, children and cellphone.
There were 68 volunteers from the community who manned the booths in both gyms to help students make decisions. There were three hour-and-a-half sessions.
This was the second year for the event. Last year, only SMS students attended. This year, they were joined by Brownstown Central, Crothersville, Medora, Immanuel Lutheran, St. John’s Sauers Lutheran, Lutheran Central and Sandy Creek Christian.
Thanks to all of the students and staff from each school who attended or helped with this event, SMS for hosting, all of the community volunteers for working at the booths and the Seymour High School Jobs for America’s Graduates students and specialists for assisting at the event. It takes everyone to make this a success.
Mecanum wheels allow savvy robot designers to create drivetrains capable of moving in any direction using a standard chassis shape.
Seymour High School’s Team 31330C implemented those wheels on its robot this season, and that move resulted in an award during the second competition of the 2024-25 season.
During the Trinity VEX V5 Robotics Competition November Qualifier on Nov. 23 at Immanuel Lutheran School in Seymour, the team, consisting of freshman Matias Barrios and sophomores Nikita Cox, Leo Holle and Kellan Stanfield, was selected by the judges as the Innovate Award recipient.
The award recognizes an effective and well-documented design process for a novel aspect of a team’s robot design or gameplay strategy.
The submission of an engineering notebook is a requirement for the Innovate Award, and the team that earns the award also should be among the top contenders for the Design Award.
An interview with the judges and gameplay observation by the judges during the tournament also played into the award.
Cox said the mecanum wheels allow their robot to go in eight directions, and that applies well to this year’s game, High Stakes.
The object of the game is to attain a higher score than the opposing alliance by scoring rings on stakes, placing mobile goals and climbing a ladder at the end of the match.
“Last year, (the game field) had a barrier in the middle and it wasn’t really open for mecanum because it was just closed, but there are no obstacles in the middle (this year),” he said. “I based it off that type of field. It’s open to do mecanum.”
The team went 4-2 and placed fifth out of 25 teams in the tournament hosted by Trinity Lutheran High School.
“What I think we did was get what we called a hammer because it could clear the corners and it looks like a hammer in general,” Cox said of a unique feature of their robot. “Also getting the drive to work better because it didn’t strafe well. Now, it strafes good.”
Holle said their robot has a few features many teams don’t have.
“We just stood out a lot,” he said.
Cox and Stanfield were on a team together last year, but this is the first year for them to be teammates with Holle and Barrios.
“It’s perseverance,” Cox said of what’s good about this year’s team.
“We’re really good fixing any problems,” Barrios said.
“And if there’s a problem, we’re really good at working together,” Cox said. “We all really have a diverse skill set, but we’re more specified in one, so if someone can’t code … someone will take their place for a bit, and once they get back, they’ll be able to do it.”
The team improved its record and ranking from the first tournament Nov. 2 to the latest one, so the boys feel good moving forward.
Their goal? Score more stakes and climb higher on the ladder.
“We want to eventually climb all the way up,” Cox said, noting it would double their points from the first level of the ladder.
“We’re trying to get a hang, which will actually improve our chances for another innovation to get to the top,” Holle said.
Seymour High School had four other teams competing in the recent tournament, and Jackson County also was represented by one Seymour Middle School team and four Trinity Lutheran teams.
Other teams were from Henryville, Indianapolis, Zionsville, Washington and Floyds Knobs.
The tournament was an official state qualifier. The only team to earn a spot at state in March was the Excellence Award winner, which was Team 7701R from Zionsville Community High School.
The tournament champions were Team 7701Z from Zionsville and Team 91976A from Washington Catholic High School, who defeated Seymour’s Team 31330D and Trinity’s Team 1483C in the championship.
Team 7701Z also won the Design Award and was the robot skills champion, while Team 621B from the Marion County STEM 4-H Club received the Judges Award.
