Alumni News

2024

• Zeh Wellington, BSN ’15, was elected president of the American Nurses Association (ANA) -Illinois. He is currently the Director of Surgical Services at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and an Adjunct Professor at Illinois College. 
• Christina McDaniel, DNP ’21, has been named System Executive Director of Palliative Care for MUSC.
• Dr. Kristen Poston, BSN, MSN, DNP, has been named the Assistant Dean of the Undergraduate Program at MUSC College of Nursing.
• Dr. Gigi Smith, Ph.D. ’12, was honored with the 2023 President’s Values in Action Impact Award.

2023

• Eleanor Adeimy, ’43, received a standing ovation during the 2023 Golden Grads reunion, where she celebrated 80 years as a MUSC College of Nursing graduate.
• Catherine Durham, DNP ’12, has been appointed dean at the Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing. Her 28 years of experience as a nurse and family nurse practitioner are coupled with 28 years of leadership and dedicated service in the U.S. Navy, where she currently holds the rank of captain.
• Teresa Kelechi, Ph.D. ’01, was one of only 22 nursing researchers worldwide to be inducted by the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame. She was named Interim Dean of MUSC College of Nursing in July.

2022

• Noah Rosenthal, RN-BSN ’20, was named MUSC’s Nurse of the Year during the Nursing Excellence Awards Ceremony in May. He currently serves as clinical staff leader for the rapid response team at MUSC-Charleston.
• Carrie Cormack, MSN ’02, DNP ’14, has been chosen as one of the 2021 ELNEC Award of Excellence recipients. ELNEC Principal Investigator Betty Ferrell, Ph.D., wrote, “Your outstanding work has promoted palliative care nursing, and you have been a role model in teaching, advocating, and providing this important and sacred work. We are grateful to you.”
• Emma Griffin, DNP ’21, has been published in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health. The article, Seclusion Reduction on an Adult Inpatient Psychiatric Unit: A Quality Improvement Project, is based on her DNP project.
• Professor Emerita Carolyn Jenkins, MSN ’88, has been awarded the 2022 Osuntokun Award for Outstanding Contributions to Stroke Research in Africa.
• Gigi Smith, Ph.D. ’12, and her research team have been awarded the 2022 Outstanding Publication award by the Association for Educational Communications & Technology for their paper, Learning Experience Design of an mHealth Intervention for Parents of Children with Epilepsy. The honor is a tribute to the outstanding collaboration and multidisciplinary work among MUSC, the Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
• Bethany Hall-Long, MSN ’88, has served as the 26th lieutenant governor of Delaware since 2017.
• Michael D. Kalos, DNP ’20, has been named patient care manager at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, part of the Allina Health System for the inpatient Wound, Ostomy & Continence Nursing team in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Annemarie Sipkes Donato, DNP ’14, co-authored an article, A Community-Based Approach to COVID-19 on a College Campus: A Case Report of a Student with Upper Respiratory Symptoms, that was published in March in The Nurse Practitioner Journal. In June, she presented a poster at the national American College Health Association (ACHA) conference. Her poster was titled Improving Outcomes and Coordination of Care for Students with Mental Health Issues: Utilizing Safety Plan, MI and Increased Communication with Campus Counselling Center.