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Alum wins first Buxbaum grad nursing scholarship
11:57 a.m., Jan. 24, 2007--Katherine Price, a UD graduate nursing student from Newark, received the Jeanne K. Buxbaum Scholarship for the spring 2007 semester, making her the first graduate nursing student to receive the award, which was established last fall. Granted to at least one undergraduate and one graduate nursing student each academic year, the Buxbaum scholarships go to students with a minimum 3.0 grade point average who intend to specialize in gerontological nursing. Price, who spent time as a child at the nursing home run by her grandmother, also a nurse, said that she is interested in the elderly from both a sociological and a clinical standpoint. “Hearing the stories my grandmother told me and seeing the number of elderly [patients] in the health-care system today has really affected me,” Price, who works in the bone marrow transplant unit at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, said. “There are more elderly in the health-care system now than ever before, and there have to be people available to care for them. “Just studying how the body progresses and goes through changes as we get older is of great interest to me, because I enjoy the scientific aspect of how our bodies age,” Price said, “and I also am interested in what the elderly have to teach us.” Price, who graduated from UD in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in nursing and then spent several years working in the bone marrow transplant unit at Christiana Hospital while taking graduate nursing classes at UD, became a full-time graduate nursing student this past fall, in order to graduate in May. This spring, besides carrying a 13-credit academic load, she will conduct research with Veronica Rempusheski, the Jeanne K. Buxbaum Chair of Nursing Science in UD's School of Nursing, and continue to work occasional weekend shifts at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Eventually, she said she hopes to complete a doctorate in health sciences and establish a career that combines teaching with clinical nursing. Rempusheski said that Price was the natural choice for the scholarship, both because of her academic standing and her interest in gerontology. “I am very pleased to be able to give this scholarship to someone who I know will contribute her own knowledge and care to the elderly,” Rempusheski said. “Kate has an intellectual curiosity about the physical changes that come with aging, and she doesn't take for granted the physical things that an elderly person can't do. She looks at eldercare from a scientific perspective and from a care perspective. “She also is able to appreciate supporting elders who might not be physically able, but who, through their emotional strength and wisdom, provide support to the practitioners who surround them. Kate credits her interest in the aged to her grandmother, who she said helped to shape her respect for the elderly.” Article by Becca Hutchinson |