Spartans receive Raleigh School of Nurse Anesthesia Scholarship
Several Spartan doctoral students in the School of Nursing have been supported by a special one-year scholarship.
Before the 2022-2023 academic year began, the Raleigh School of Nurse Anesthesia Board of Directors established a merit scholarship for students in UNC Greensboro’s School of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Nurse Anesthesia Concentration. The recipients were rising seniors in the three-year program, starting with the highest-GPA students, and descending until the funds – totaling nearly $112,000 – were awarded entirely.
Awardee and first-generation college student Angel Jones hails from Morganton, North Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from East Carolina University and worked on a Surgical Trauma ICU and a Neuro Trauma ICU as a bedside nurse. UNCG’s nurse anesthesia program appealed to her because its graduates have a reputation for being clinically very well-prepared. When she graduates with her DNP in August, she has a job lined up in Greenville, North Carolina, to work as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.
“I am honored to have been chosen for this financial gift,” Jones says. “This scholarship was distributed based on merit, which goes to show that hard work will pay off in the end. I will pass along this lesson to my nieces and nephews to help inspire them to follow their dreams.”
Laura Haulsee, a fellow scholarship recipient, is a native of Pinehurst, North Carolina, and received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from UNC-Chapel Hill. Following graduation, she was hired into a new graduate registered nurse training program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., where she worked in the neurosurgical ICU. When Haulsee started considering nurse anesthesia programs, her aunt, a nurse anesthetist herself for more than 30 years, recommended the Raleigh School, which had been recently acquired by UNCG. She chose UNCG because it offered the DNP degree and the most diversity in training sites, plus it was the most affordable program in the state and close to home.
Says Haulsee, “It makes me really proud to know that other people recognize my potential in this unbelievable career and want to support my academic efforts. I can’t wait to get started as a nurse anesthetist and be able to pay it forward to future deserving students who work hard and deserve to be recognized.”
While Angel and Laura are honored to have been rewarded for academic excellence, they are also grateful for the scholarship’s relieving the stress of significant student debt. But what precipitated this generous gift from the Raleigh School to UNCG? Clinical Assistant Professor Dr. Linda Stone explains it was due in large part to a history of partnership between the two institutions.
“The predecessor to the UNC Greensboro DNP Nurse Anesthesia program, the Raleigh School of Nurse Anesthesia began in 1990 and was a private nurse anesthesia program and educational entity until 2018,” says Dr. Stone. “Student registered nurse anesthetists enrolled in this program were dually enrolled in the Raleigh School and in UNCG, which was the degree-granting institution for the Master of Science in Nursing degree awarded. In 2015, the Raleigh School became part of the UNC Greensboro School of Nursing.”
UNCG’s anesthesia program is one of six in North Carolina and a leader in nurse anesthesia education. It offers a Concentration in Nurse Anesthesia leading to a DNP degree. Its graduates are direct anesthesia care providers for a variety of patients in a wide range of settings and participate in all aspects of anesthesia patient care.
That care is highly impactful. In work locations that include hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory surgery centers, nurse anesthetists administer more than 50 million anesthetics annually across the United States.
This gift by the Raleigh School of Nurse Anesthesia is part of the Light the Way campaign, which seeks to raise $200 million to increase access, elevate academic excellence, and enhance the tremendous impact of UNCG’s programs.
To learn more about UNCG’s Light the Way: The Campaign for Earned Achievement, visit lighttheway.uncg.edu.
Photograph: (l-r) Laura Haulsee and Angel Jones