Senator Dan Hegeman, representing the 12th Senatorial District, and Dr. Martha Hoffman Goedert, Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Public Health will be the commencement speakers at North Central Missouri College in Trenton on May 6, 2017.
Senator Hegeman will speak at the 9:00 a.m. morning ceremony and Dr. Goedert will be the 1:00 p.m. afternoon speaker. Both ceremonies will take place at the Ketcham Community Center on the NCMC campus near downtown Trenton.
Elected in November 2014, Senator Dan Hegeman represents the 12th Senatorial District. He is currently president of Andrew County Farm Bureau. He is a lifetime farmer and is part owner of a six-generation family-owned row crop and cattle farm in Andrew County. Senator Hegeman currently serves as a community affairs manager for Kansas City Power & Light.
A 1981 graduate of Savannah High School, Sen. Hegeman received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri in 1985. Senator Hegeman previously served in the Missouri House of Representatives, representing Atchison, Holt, Andrew, Gentry and DeKalb counties. He also served as the associate district manager for Congressman Sam Graves’ St. Joseph office.
Over the years, Sen. Hegeman has cultivated strong ties to the area through his community involvement, which includes serving as president of the Second Harvest Regional Food Bank Board of Directors. In addition, Sen. Hegeman serves on the Northwest Missouri Enterprise Facilitation Board, the Nodaway County Economic Development Board, and the Maryville Industrial Development Council Board. He is the former board president of the Maryville Chamber of Commerce.
Senator Hegeman and his wife, Fran, live on a farm near Cosby and have four children: Heidi, Joshua, Hannah, and Joseph. He has been a life-long member of Hope United Church of Christ in Cosby. He is also a member of the Moila Shrine Temple.
Dr. Martha Hoffman Goedert received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Vermont, Masters of Science in Nursing from the University of Kentucky, and her Ph.D. in Health Education from the University of Utah.
Dr. Goedert is a global health advocate, a curriculum developer for health care worker education, an educator, a nurse midwife, and a family nurse practitioner. For the last decade, Dr. Goedert has been involved with life-saving skill simulations globally, training urban and rural health care workers to improve maternal and neonatal survival. Most recently, she served in Tanzania with the Peace Corps and Seed Global Health as a Visiting Professor at the University of Dodoma’s College of Health.
Her life’s work continues to focus on serving vulnerable families across the globe. Dr. Goedert aims to combine interdisciplinary higher education students in academic service-learning while collaborating with health care systems in rural and vulnerable areas, in the States and beyond. She began her career on the Navajo reservation with learning the extreme value of population health early in her career with Navajo families in New Mexico. She continues to combine clinical, teaching, and research as she serves populations ‘at the end of the road.’
Dr. Goedert’s professional interests include teaching simulation skills, Helping Babies Breathe, Every Newborn Action Plan, Training the Trainer on MCNH lifesaving, doing prison outreach, creating programs to address primary prevention of substance abuse, (especially methamphetamine), networking with local partners to improve refugee mental health and wellness, and working as a volunteer with Midwives for Haiti and Seed with special projects.
