The Heart and Mind

Montefiore St. Luke’s impactful connection with the Mount

Photos by Lee Ferris

In the City of Newburgh, the distance between earning a nursing degree and saving a life on the front lines is shorter than you might think. 

Look on Powell Ave. and you’ll see Mount Saint Mary College. Just down the road is Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital. To the casual observer, they’re two Hudson Valley landmarks. 

But the link between the classroom and the hospital is built on a shared philosophy. 

Mount alumna Margaret Allers ’03, Vice President of Patient Care, COO, and CNO at Montefiore St. Luke's Cornwall, knows the anatomy of this pipeline intimately.

“The Mount not only provided me with my clinical education, but they ingrained in me some core competencies: to be accountable and committed to excellence, and to be compassionate.”

Reflecting on her own trajectory as a multi-time alumna, Allers explains that these foundational tenets are what allow a clinician to evolve into an organizational leader.

“The Mount helped shape my foundational skills to be able to critically think, to be able to lead, to be able to serve this community,” she said. “Through that, I developed the ability to be accountable and committed to excellence, and then to be compassionate to provide compassionate care. And I’ve used those competencies through my entire career to guide everything that I’ve done here.”

When recruiting the individuals who will execute care, Allers looks for a distinct, dual-bucket equilibrium: “I’ve always believed in the model of the heart and mind,” she said. “You need compassion to take care of patients… Then there’s the second bucket, which is your skills as a nurse.”

But clinical mastery doesn’t appear by accident. Daniel J. Maughan, ’01, MSN ’11, MBA ’04, FNP-c, President and CEO of Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall, believes the transition from a student to a high-caliber professional hinges on personal accountability.

“For current Mount students, my best advice is this is your education, so you have to take full advantage of it,” he said. “The college offers you very small classroom sizes where you can ask any question to any faculty member. But you have to put that effort in. It’s your education, so it has to be your effort, and you have the best of the best to help you get it.”

For the students navigating the rigorous pipeline between the Mount and St. Luke’s, the institutional philosophy translates into deeply personal motivation and professional development. Rebecca McDonough of Walden, N.Y. graduated from the Mount in May. She points to the unique infrastructure of support that underpins the college’s program as a major reason for her success.

“The Mount has a lot of supportive help,” she explained. “They have disability services for people to take their exams in a different environment…and the tutoring for every course I've needed has been available.”

McDonough notes that her path was shaped early on by a family history of altruism.

“I knew I wanted to be a nurse because I grew up in a family of volunteers, so helping others always came naturally to me,” she said. “My experience as an EMT strengthened that interest and made me realize I wanted to further that by becoming a nurse, where I could make a direct impact on patients while continuing to learn and grow.”

This desire to make an impact is echoed by Elizabeth Martinez, a Mount nursing student from Monroe, N.Y. Her connection to the profession was forged during a profound crisis at the very start of her family’s life: “My son being born at 25 weeks and spending seven months in the NICU really pushed me to pursue [nursing] seriously,” she said. “The nurses cared not only for my son, but also for my family during one of the hardest times in our lives.”

The transition from classroom lectures into practical bedside skills occurs during clinical rotations, where abstract concepts become living medical realities, McDonough explained.

“I’m able to apply my classroom knowledge to clinicals when I see patients in the scenario I saw on the blackboard,” she said. “I’m able to connect those dots, and with my clinical instructors’ positive reinforcement behind me, I’m able to make the whole picture complete.”

For Maughan, hiring qualified Mount graduates is an investment in the community.

“I like to hire local community members who have gone to school at one of our local colleges,” he explained. “And the foundation that the Mount gives in education, leadership, and compassion – whether you’re in a clinical or non-clinical program – is second to none as far as I’m concerned. Those are strong qualities and things we certainly need here at a hospital... because we believe that every role in this hospital serves our patients and families.”

Because the hospital functions as a primary clinical rotation site, the interview process effectively begins long before graduation day. Maughan notes that this long-term exposure takes the guesswork out of talent acquisition.

“When we’re hiring Mount nurses, we know what we are getting,” he explained. “We already know what the education is, we’ve seen them in our clinical rotations, and so we know what that foundation of education looks like.”

For Allers, Mount graduates provide an injection of vital energy that prevents institutional stagnation: “Mount grads come very well prepared, they’re well rounded, they’re professional... they come with a purpose, a want to be in healthcare.”

Ultimately, the dialogue between these leaders points to a singular, unifying reality: both institutions are anchored to the same demographic challenges, the same geographic grid, and the same local families. They are co-stewards of an underserved population in the City of Newburgh.

Maughan looks at this partnership as a macro-level civic alliance: “Mount Saint Mary College and Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall have many shared missions, but commitment to community, I’d have to say, is the largest one that we serve together. The programs at the Mount for volunteer work, for clinical rotations, all involve this community. And I think the Mount does that exceptionally well. We do too here at Montefiore St. Luke’s, and it’s something that we value very deeply…Together, we are caring for this community.”

Nicholas Shannon ‘03, Executive Director of the Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Health System Foundation, notes that the work of funding and sustaining this system is a collaborative effort that simply cannot happen in a vacuum. 

“Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall and the Mount have a shared mission of caring for our community,” he said. “We serve a very underserved population here in Newburgh, but together we want to really rise above, and together we’re doing that. From the education that individuals receive at the Mount to the care we give at the hospital, and the outreach we both provide in volunteering… it really is a shared vision, and we couldn’t do it without each other.”