Bev Donaldson drove home from COTC with a dead cat in a plastic bag. She was a 17-year-old nursing student, and dissecting it as homework was her only chance at hands-on learning. Almost 50 years later, now the founder of The Inns concept and president of The Inns Management Group, Donaldson is dedicated to giving today’s COTC students access to technology and opportunities that she never had.

She had a job she enjoyed upon graduating with her associate degree in nursing in 1976. But she and her husband Doug, especially amidst his career change, decided they needed to find better ways to support their young family. Nursing homes paid the highest wages around, “so that’s where I went,” she said. “It wasn’t where I thought I wanted to work, but I fell in love with caring for the seniors.”

That love led the Newark native to a unique idea. Donaldson sought to combine the constant care of a nursing home with the comfort of independent apartments. “A resort with help,” she called it, “which didn’t exist here.” So when The Inn at SharonBrooke was born in 1987, “we became the first freestanding assisted living facility in Ohio.”

Since then, Donaldson’s family has developed 29 such facilities across the state. They still own and operate 14 of them and continue to treat residents “like they’re our own grandparents.” Sometimes they are — Donaldson’s grandparents received care at SharonBrooke. Her father, legendary local developer Jerry McClain, even lives there now. “He’s experiencing what we created, what we literally built from the ground up,” she said. “Our business has grown and thrived.”

Now, she’s helping COTC students grow and thrive. The Donaldsons financed the state-of-the-art anatomy lab in the John and Mary Alford Center for Science and Technology, and they wrote to administrators to advocate for the creation of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program. They also fund the annual Douglas and Beverly Donaldson Scholarship that honors deserving COTC students pursuing a degree or certificate in a healthcare field.

Becca Saxton is a recent recipient. “It took so much stress off me,” Saxton said about the Donaldsons’ scholarship. “Everything I’m able to do as a nurse now is because of my COTC degree, and they helped make it possible.” Saxton is sure she won’t be the last student, nurse or not, to benefit from the family’s forward thinking. “As they continue offering opportunities, others can turn out like I did — with a degree and really thriving in my career.”

Donaldson has helped improve the quality of life in her community. After devoting her career to caring for its oldest generation, she is now upgrading the prospects of its next generation. From where she derived her inspiration is no secret — the cat’s out of the bag. “It all developed from my time at COTC,” she said. “It made such a difference in my life, and now I want to give back.”