Students help in launching Flint-based home for cancer patients
Central Michigan University hospitality students have had a hand in both designing and managing the newly-opened McLaren Hospitality House in Flint.
The house is set up to help treat and accommodate individuals suffering from prostate cancer by using proton therapy treatments. These treatments affect the cells around the cancer, leaving patients with very few effects from treatment.
Because the procedures take a series of weeks to complete, the Hospitality House not only helps cure patients, but provides a comfortable home to them as they undergo treatment.
“In developing our Proton Therapy Center, we found from other centers that 30 to 50 percent of their patients came from greater than two hours away,” said McLaren Vice President Roxanne Caine. “The course of treatment lasts anywhere from five to nine weeks, with the patient receiving a fraction of the treatment five days a week. Because of the special needs patients and their caregivers, the Hospitality House concept was developed to help meet those special needs and provide a home-away-from-home.”
Students and other members of the establishment of the Hospitality House have been busy raising $8 million for the house and $24 million for the proton treatment machine through fundraising projects and donations made to the McLaren Foundation.
“Out of my 15 years of teaching hospitality, this is my proudest moment,” said Gary Gagnon, assistant professor of marketing and hospitality services. “Patients will be able to stay in this house for as little as $30 per night. If these patients are unable to pay that amount, there will always be someone willing to pay for them."
Gagnon said his students are looking to other ways of fundraising off campus and approaching major companies like Whirlpool and Serta to donate goods or sponsor rooms.
What is arguably more exciting than the establishment of the Hospitality Housing is the amount of student commitment to this off-campus project, he said. Students are working for no money or college credit, but simply because of the real-world training this experience provides them.
“My role in the process of the Hospitality House is to help connect the two completely different fields, referring to the medical field and the hospitality field,” said Traverse City senior Morgan Johnson. “This is something that is fairly new and very exciting. I hope to be able to work on the medical side of the Hospitality House by bringing in the type of personality that is needed to connect the inspiration that is needed to roll over on to the clinical side of things as well.”
To all of the members taking part in the development of the Hospitality House, this is a subject that hits close to home and is a task all members take seriously.
“This is an amazing project,” Johnson said. “It is something that will impact lives for years to come — not just curing the patients, but also all the CMU hospitality students that are involved in this real, hands-on experience.”
