Kate Soons ’92

I’m purple and gold inside and out,” says Kate Soons, whose father, son, and husband are also Saint Michael’s alumni. This is a woman you want close by in a crisis: Saint Michael’s College Fire and Rescue Alumna of the Year 2013 and 2023, Vermont EMS Educator of the Year 2016, Vermont EMS for Children Champion 2019 and 2021, University of Vermont Medical Center Trauma Service Community Champion 2019, Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society inductee 2019, Colchester Rescue Squad Life Member 2020. But even this fiercely committed, ferociously capable person has had her share of change and what Soons calls “refocusing.” 

“I’m naturally positive,” she admits, “but I choose joy.” In the last five years, Soons has faced brain surgery and breast cancer. And these challenges have only made her stronger. Values that she shares with the Edmundites, including service to others and commitment to educating others, are an integral source of that strength.  

Photo by Jerry Swope.

Soons has come a long way since she began helping out in her father’s eyecare office when she was 15 years old. After getting her B.A. in Psychology at St. Mike’s, Soons earned an M.S. in nursing education from Excelsior College in Albany; critical care certifications for adults and children; emergency medical services certificates for areas as varied as emergency vehicle operation, advanced cardiac life support, and pediatric advanced life support; and certification for intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring, to name a few. In other words, she has not stopped learning, volunteering, and sharing her expertise. 

Her early “aha” moment came when, as a first-year student, second semester, she took an advanced first aid class at Fire and Rescue. “I was hooked,” she says. Soons stayed over that summer, volunteering hundreds of hours to learn how to provide emergency medical care for the sick and injured. Saint Michael’s College Fire and Rescue launched a decades long career in EMS for Soons. She has served as both an educator and leader for the Vermont EMS system since the early 1990s. She regularly travels around the state to teach at local services and work on pediatric emergency preparedness. 

“I’m a people person,” she says. Soons has long been fascinated with psychology, physiology, and the brain. She began working at the University of Vermont Medical Center in 1992 in the Vermont Poison Center and moved on to the clinical neurophysiology lab. Her tool kit of skills grew, including managing poison exposures, doing orthopedic splinting, practicing electroencephalography, and on and on. She wants current St. Mike’s students to have opportunities to experience the same kind of growth and curiosity. 

And the need is there for them to do so. There is increasing demand for professionals with training in emergency management and disaster preparedness. Demand for healthcare has increased with life span and chronic disease, and healthcare workers are aging out—or burning out. How best to prepare students for all these changes? 

This year, on July 1, Soons will become the director of the Health Sciences program at Saint Michael’s College. There are many opportunities in healthcare, and Soons hopes to give St. Mike’s students a full range of options by exposing them to different settings through internships and job shadowing. The courses Soons currently teaches lead to many forms of licensure, including the emergency medical technician (EMT), advanced EMT, and licensed nursing assistant (LNA) licenses. These practical skills, when combined with the fundamental critical problem-solving skills embedded throughout the liberal arts curriculum, give students many choices. Collaborating across campus, she’s working with departments and centers to inspire students to become agents of change. 

 “Our community extends way beyond campus,” she says proudly. “We’d all like to see an increased accessibility to healthcare, and we can become a leader in our region.” On campus, Soons hopes to strengthen the alumni healthcare network and develop an Emergency Services minor. “We have a fantastic Health Sciences major. I am looking forward to building out more opportunities for students,” she adds. 

And she’s not done learning, either. On the horizon: an M.A. in Public Health. “It’s my liberal arts background,” she says, “that gives me a sense of awareness of the world I work in.”