WKU News

Finals week is wrapping up at WKU, two months after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted all learning to take place online.

Perhaps nowhere was that more of a challenge than for nursing students.

But they pressed on and in this week’s View from the Hill, WKU’s Amy Bingham shows us how they celebrated with a virtual recognition ceremony.

“These guys are going out to start their profession, you know a professional career in nursing, that’s hard anyway, in the middle of a pandemic.  So that’s really special.”

Close to 100 WKU senior nursing students had their BSN recognition ceremony virtually.

 “I love that we were able to reflect together and kind of just close on this chapter of life cause I know it’s scary and uncomfortable and not what we expected but they were able to give us what we needed and what we were excited for all along.”

“It was emotional just to see them and see them in their homes in their gowns or not in their gowns and to be able to listen to them and hear from them.”

Senior Katelyn Abel has a job lined up at Vanderbilt Hospital.  She says she feels prepared in spite of the way her semester ended.

 “The nursing school was so good about adjusting and helping make sure we were able to get experience in the clinicals and education we needed to feel confident doing out there.”

“The truth is when they graduate they’re not going to be on their own initially.   “They’ll graduate and go back to the classroom and they’ll be there for months, a lot of these places maybe a year before they are taking care of patients on their own.”

Taking the nursing pledge virtually and in their self-reflective papers vowing to be the change.

“One of the things that’s so great that I read, after this COVID-19 is that our students are more determined than ever to be great nurses.”

Conferral of degrees: All WKU spring 2020 graduates will be celebrated virtually at 4 p.m. CDT Friday. The ceremonial conferral of degrees will be streamed online on Facebook and YouTube.  For information, visit www.wku.edu/commencement

#WKUGrad series: As part of our #WKUGrad series, articles on graduating students are shared in the weeks leading up to Commencement. See all of their stories at https://www.wku.edu/news/articles/index.php?view=default&categoryid=799&multinewsid=187