Class of ‘94 nursing alumni celebrate 30 years of deep friendship

For a small group of nurses who graduated 30 years ago, the University of Calgary was where their lifelong friendship was forged.

“We nicknamed ourselves the SNICS — Student Nurses in Constant Stress,” says Jodi Cattich (nee Miller), BN’94. “There was humour to be found to pull us all through some academic and personal challenges in our years together.” 

SNICs is made up of Cattich, Eleanor Benterud, Barb Rhodes, Marlee MacDonald, Karen Erickson King, Laurinda Janiszewski and Sandra Gohill. While they may be living and working across Canada and the U.S. now, this particular group of alumni has remained close friends ever since nursing school. 

They continue to find ways to remain in each other’s lives and in recent years, started a tradition to reunite in person on vacation for their milestone reunions. For their 20th anniversary, they took a group trip to San Francisco, went to Mexico for the 25th anniversary and in 2023, held their 30-year reunion in Cartagena, Colombia.

Colombia was chosen because Cartagena is like a second home for organizer Benterud’s family as they are avid kite-surfers. Cattich, who currently lives in Denver, Colo. says, “What a trip it was — lots of celebrations and catching up over the years. It is incredible to see the friendships develop and change over the years, all with the common thread of our education together.”

Benterud says they all started nursing school in their 20s and that “none of us have the same career path or started in the same area." 

"It’s so diverse among us, from working in mental health to critical care, public health, community health, etc.”

Reminiscing about what it was like immediately after graduation, Cattich says job opportunities for new grads during the Ralph Klein years simply were not here at home. “There wasn’t a lot of hope for new grads, but that being said, the ones I kept in touch with went all over. Marlee went to northern Alberta, Barb Anderson went down to Texas, Laurinda worked in psych mental health as a student nurse and I went down to Arizona, studied for the American exams and landed a job in subacute rehab.”

Cattich has worked in Phoenix, Ariz., Tacoma, Wash. in chronic dialysis and even Omaha, Neb. where she got into and stayed in the world of neonatal intensive care. She has worked in a level three NICU in Littleton, Colo. for 22 years before recently retiring. 

“I’ve worked with researchers in the world of maternal childcare in a program called Helping Babies Breathe which has grown to include a suite of nine different programs helping babies and mothers survive,” says Cattich. “We have worked in Tanzania, Nepal, Peru and Haiti.”

For the last eight years, Benterud has worked for UCalgary’s Cumming School of Medicine in the nephrology division as a senior research coordinator in health services research. “My clinical background has always been critical care, the OR and emergency.”

Benterud remembers graduating as a new nurse and says the atmosphere in health care at the time was highly competitive and there were talks of strikes with the union. “There was just a lot of conflict going on but as a new nurse, it was like get a job where you can and maybe you’ll get a line one day.”

Benterud says she was the ‘odd man out’ in the group as she took an additional year in the program and officially convocated in ‘95. Her peers in SNICs asked her to MC the grad ceremony. She eventually came back to her alma mater to complete her Master of Nursing in 2002. She is also a current mentor who is sharing her experiences in the Faculty of Nursing’s online mentorship program NurseMentor. 

“One of the things I say to my mentees is to find your people early,” she says. “I tell each one of my mentees about SNICs and they’re all like ‘that’s so cool!’ But you have to make the effort to stay connected. You need a village and community — that really tightened our group to last beyond nursing school. It has gone beyond a normal friendship; now, we’re intertwined in each others’ lives.”

Cattich agrees. “We took great care to cultivate a strong group of friends. Graduation was where things kind of ended in one sense and began in another. This group of girlfriends will always be near the top of that list of treasures and blessings.”