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| Leslie Kearfott (above) and TaSondra Foltz (below) will receive $20,000 from the Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare grant to pursue their Doctor of Nursing Practice at Oakland University. |
Good news travels far and fast.
Leslie Kearfott (MSN ’13) was in Ecuador, while TaSondra Foltz (MSN ’14) was on a 15-minute break at her job at the VA Medical Center in Detroit when Kathleen Spencer, visiting assistant professor in Oakland’s SON and coordinator of Veterans Education Programs tracked them down.
She had life-changing news: They won.
Kearfott and Foltz won $20,000 scholarships from a Jonas Center for Nursing and Veterans Healthcare grant to go after their
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), the final degree for nurses in clinical practice.
Registered nurses who possess a DNP degree are ready to assume clinical and leadership roles in both academic and practice settings.
The Jonas Center grant, which funds Oakland’s 2014 DNP Jonas Nurse Leader Scholar and its DNP Jonas Veterans Healthcare Scholar, is part of a national effort to stem the faculty shortage by doubling the number of doctorally prepared nurses as America’s healthcare system evolves.
For Kearfott, the Nurse Leader scholarship completely changed her plans.
“I really had no intention of going back for my DNP,” said Kearfott, a pediatric clinical instructor at University of Michigan-SON, who also works as a family nurse practitioner for a pediatric office in Bloomfield Hills and as a medical missionary. “I didn’t want to take on more student loans.”
After seeing an email about the Jonas opportunity, she considered applying for it for several weeks without acting on it. Days before leaving on back-to-back missionary trips – one to Nicaragua and the other to Ecuador – I said, “What the heck do I have to lose?”
Instead, she won.
After receiving Spencer’s congratulatory email in Ecuador, she felt much gratitude for the opportunity to impact the profession and the future nurses of the world.
“I know this is a huge honor,” Kearfott admitted. “I hope I do it justice.”
Foltz, who finished her MSN in August, was ready to take a break from schooling. Between clinicals, attending school full time and working full time on the mental health unit at the VA Medical Center, she was ready for at least a year off. She also was eager to make a dent in her student loan debt.
But after reading the scholarship requirements, she knew she fit the requirements to a tee. The generous funding was a big motivator, too, she admits.
“I figured if I won it, then it was meant to be,” Foltz explained.
And it was meant to be.
“I was so excited when I got the phone call,” she said. “I couldn't believe that out of many applicants, I was the selected candidate. I have never received any financial aid scholarship awards especially to the magnitude of $20,000. This scholarship was the removal of another barrier that would have prolonged me from attaining my DNP,” Foltz said.
She’s ready to help shape the way treatment is delivered to military heroes.
“A lot of our new veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder and are having a hard time dealing with it,” she said.
She helped revise a workbook to speed their recovery and the veterans are responding to its helpfulness.
“The workbook has helped us increase group participation 75 percent since we revised it,” Foltz revealed.
“This Jonas scholarship is going to help me help our veterans even more,” she predicted.
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By Rene Wisely