Mattie’s passion and brand of active leadership have carried over into her duties at Quinnipiac, where she is chair of health care management in the School of Business, professor of health sciences in School of Medicine and moderator for the campus chapter of ACHE (the American College of Healthcare Executives). She sees her job as more than educating students about health care paradigms and policies, or even helping them to find jobs.

“My primary goal is to get students involved,” she said. “What we want is to train the next generation of people right here to be fluent in patient safety tactics and technology.”

Mattie’s students regularly tackle relevant and often polarizing issues. A group of her health care students recently investigated the legal, financial and public health implications of the funding cuts resulting from the Connecticut Hospitals Tax, a contentious bit of legislature meant to provide much needed income for Connecticut’s cities.

The group’s efforts have attracted attention in the health care community, and they have already submitted their findings to several conferences and peer reviewed journals. For Mattie, the project’s success supports a belief that she has held throughout her career.

School of Business

School of Law

“I’ve always said that this interdisciplinary model is necessary for addressing the problems in our health care system,” she said. “Ideally, our efforts will serve as an example for others.”

For her own continuous effort to resolve the problems in our health care system, Mattie was awarded the Leapfrog Bruce Bradley Fellowship in 2017. The prestigious, year-long education and training program enables her as a corporate health professionals to work directly with businesses to identify and use safer, higher-quality hospitals and health systems.

As with all of her personal accomplishments, Mattie saw her Leapfrog Fellowship selection as yet another conduit for involving her students. Mattie worked with her senior students on a project that compiled and examined information about the quality of care given at multiple Connecticut hospitals.

Mattie and her team delivered their findings to the Leapfrog board, presented at a national conference and submitted a peer-review article. For her, the experience is more about more than building stronger CVs, but rather making Quinnipiac students part of a national healthcare conversation.

“This opportunity has introduced our students to a national organization and its thought-leaders, and will provide them one-on-one meetings with hospital CEOs,” Mattie said.