Minority Nurse 2015 Scholarship Announcement

Each year, Minority Nurse awards scholarships to three outstanding nursing students. Selecting our recipients can be quite the challenge, and this year was no exception. We received a record-breaking 107 scholarship applications! Our scholarship committee, formed by members of the National Coalition of Ethnic Minority Nurse Associations, reviewed each application and selected our winners after much deliberation.

And the 2015 scholarship recipients are…

WINNER

Amazing-Grace Ighedo
Mount Mercy University

Amazing-Grace was inspired to pursue a career in nursing after surviving a ghastly car accident in Nigeria when she was just 16 years old. She immigrated to the U.S. in 2009 to start a family with her spouse, which gave her the opportunity to pursue that dream. Despite being a mother of three with no previous background in the sciences, Amazing-Grace has been awarded the Outstanding Student Award, has been on the Dean’s List every semester, and maintained a 4.0 GPA. She is an active volunteer at the free clinic in her community as well as her church, and she often tutors students. Her long-term career goal is to become a nurse anesthetist and work in under-served communities.

RUNNERS-UP

Erika Colindres
New Jersey City University

As the daughter of teenage immigrant parents consumed by working two jobs, poverty, and a language barrier, Erika’s life was filled with making adjustments. Despite facing such adversity, she was the first person in her family to receive a college degree and graduated from St. Lawrence University with a B.S. in biology in 2012. During an internship with the University of Michigan School of Public Health,  she worked closely with the nonprofit organization MPH Salud helping doctors in mobile clinics and providing health sessions for migrant farm workers. Afterwards, she was given the opportunity to present at the Centers for Disease Control conference in Atlanta on the work conducted during her internship. She is currently enrolled in an accelerated nursing program and wants to help Hispanics whose language barrier is an impediment to them receiving adequate treatment.

YiWan Wu
Stony Brook University

YiWan has overcome language barriers and succeeded in college both in academic and extracurricular activities. She has been an active volunteer at the Stony Brook Medical Center and has hosted multiple bone marrow drives to help spread awareness about blood cancers. She was a recipient of the 2014 New York State College Health Association Outstanding Student Award and was selected as a student representative of the American College Health Association. She aspires to be a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Be sure to pick up a copy of the Fall 2015 issue of Minority Nurse to learn more about these amazing individuals! The staff at Minority Nurse would like to congratulate our winners and thank all of you who applied for our scholarship.