[SPOKANE, Wash.] —It’s not very often that three classmates graduate from the same program together and end up leading that same program together 14 years later, but sometimes, people beat the odds.
Spokane Community College respiratory care faculty members Toni D’Amato, Michelle Samuels and Justine Morgan graduated from the respiratory care program in 2010 not knowing the place they met would be the same place that brought them back together years later.
Life as a Student
Samuels, who is now director of clinical education in the Respiratory Care Program, learned about the SCC allied health program through Morgan while they were working together at a massage therapy clinic in Coeur D’Alene.
D’Amato ended up in respiratory care after first completing her general associate degree from Spokane Falls Community College before going to SCC to study respiratory.
After school and some time in the field, Samuels and D’Amato received their bachelor’s degrees from Boise State University and Morgan from University of Idaho.
“We are all kind of a united front. We know each other very well and we work together very well,” said D’Amato, SCC respiratory care program director.
Out in the Field
D’Amato began her career at Sacred Heart Medical Center when she was hired as a student intern in 2009 while Samuels and Morgan interned at Kootenai Health in Coeur D’Alene the same year.
“I felt a draw to teaching and definitely felt a draw to working with students at that time,” D’Amato said. “I loved working with the students. When they came in, I always took them with me.”
In 2010 D’Amato was working with her former director of clinical education when her path to teaching slowly started to unfold. She began as an adjunct faculty member and clinical preceptor of the program in 2013.
Samuels and Morgan worked together at Kootenai Health in Coeur D’Alene for just over ten years before they made the transition to higher education.
Much like D’Amato, Morgan was always eager to take clinical students under her wing.
“I loved patient care,” Morgan said. “Hours were becoming challenging with having two young children, so I was only working as a needed basis when teaching came down my pipeline.”
Samuels was constantly seeking variety in the field and enjoyed her time as a respiratory care therapist, and it was during her master's degree at University of Idaho that she became interested in using her years of experience to become an educator.
Back to Class
Samuels finished her Masters of Adult Organizational Learning and Leadership in 2019. With all her degrees in hand, she reconnected with D'Amato to figure out what it might take to share her clinical skills in the classroom.
Soon after the two talked, an adjunct position opened when the trio’s former instructor Gary White was retiring from his tenured position at SCC.
“The stars just aligned, and we knew, once Michelle and I were here, that to make us kind of that perfect team that we needed Justine,” D’Amato said. “We know we made the right choice when we brought Justine in to round out the group.”
The two recruited Morgan in 2020 as an adjunct faculty member and before she knew it, she was a full-time faculty member teaching respiratory care students everything from fundamentals of respiratory care to technical skills labs.
“Now I've been here for three years now,” Morgan said. “I really didn't think I would ever be in a classroom teaching. During my clinicals I always took students, and I always enjoyed that, but I never really saw myself in the classroom atmosphere.”
Seeing the power of education continually motivates the three program leaders to elevate SCC’s respiratory care department so students can reimagine what they’re capable of.
"If we can teach these students to be not just knowledgeable caregivers, but compassionate caregivers and patient advocates. Anything that I want to do for a patient, I can do tenfold through my students," D’Amato said. “They're going to go do that work that I would want to do, it multiplies through all of them.”