WCU Stories      December 19, 2024

By Bill Studenc

The nearly 75 members of the inaugural class of Conway Scholars in Western Carolina University’s School of Nursing met their benefactor and heard a message of gratitude for obstacles overcome and encouragement for challenges ahead from North Carolina’s highest ranked health care official Thursday, Dec. 12, on the eve of commencement.

Kody Kinsley, North Carolina’s outgoing secretary of health and human services, delivered the keynote address at a special ceremony at which 73 soon-to-be nursing graduates received pins signifying their transition into the nursing profession.

Students in the WCU master’s degree and doctoral programs in nursing also participated in a hooding ceremony at the event, which was attended by N.C. Sen. Gale Adcock (D-Wake), who is a nurse practitioner.

Philanthropist William Conway, whose Bedford Falls Foundation-DAF made a $2.1 million gift to WCU providing scholarships to undergraduate nursing students and enabling the hiring of additional faculty to guide them in their clinical experiences, was on hand to shake the hand of every student receiving a pin.

Conway’s wife, fellow philanthropist Joanne Conway, died in January, prompting an additional $100,000 memorial gift from her husband on top of their initial $2 million contribution from Bedford Falls, a donor-advised fund that supports a wide range of charitable and educational causes in the eastern United States. Those gifts established the Joanne and William Conway Nursing Scholarship program at WCU, with recipients known as Conway Scholars.

That donation marks the single largest gift in the history of WCU’s College of Health and Human Sciences and the School of Nursing, dramatically increasing the amount of scholarship support for prelicensure nursing students, said Lori Anderson, the college’s dean.

“The gift is transformative, profoundly affects our students and reduces financial barriers so that they can focus and complete their studies and clinical training. Careers in nursing have an impact on the individual lives of our students and their families and the economic and social prosperity of our communities, region and the state of North Carolina,” Anderson said.

“I am forever grateful to you and your late wife, Joanne, for making dreams a reality for our students,” she said to Conway, presenting him with a plaque of appreciation.

During his keynote address, Kinsley praised the nursing students for their role in helping Western North Carolina recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, which tore across the mountain region in late September.

“Your educational journey had a wrench thrown into it by Hurricane Helene, which many students may have seen as just an interruption or a delay or other personal impact on their lives. But I know that many of you ran into the wake of the storm. You worked in clinics and alongside paramedics. You passed out aid. You supported your neighbors, your friends and your family, and you did whatever it took to help,” he said.

It is often in the midst of crisis that individuals reveal who they really are, Kinsley said.

“While today you will officially become nurses, I believe it was in the moments of that storm when you heard your calling and became who you are. To be a nurse is to see the whole thing. It’s to see the whole picture of what’s really going on. It’s to understand what drives action. It’s to understand that what drives health is what happens outside of the clinic,” he said.

“It’s about holding the hand of a patient or a loved one in their darkest moments. It’s about understanding that the weight of 40 trillion gallons of water is as much as the weight of three tears shed after a horrible diagnosis. It’s about working as a team to see how everyone can come together to solve the problem. And, yes, it’s about no matter what, running into the storm,” Kinsley said.

As the nursing students become graduates and go out into their careers, they will find themselves dealing with a new storm in the form of the many challenges facing health care in the U.S., including rising costs, lower life expectancy and less access, he said. Despite those challenges, Kinsley said he remains optimistic about the future of health care in North Carolina, in large part because of the graduates he was addressing.

“You know this situation, yet you said ‘yes.’ You said ‘yes’ to running into the storm. You said ‘yes’ to continuing to persevere in your education no matter how complicated you understood health care to be. So don’t be discouraged. You see the whole picture. You understand what it means to be on a team. You know what it takes to build trust in that moment where the patient finally can share what is really going on,” he said.

“I encourage you to take that approach to our systems. Don’t fall victim to blaming the person just outside of your understanding. Don’t fall victim to thinking that it’s an evil CEO or it’s a really bad this or a really bad whatever,” Kinsley said. “Understand that we are all part of a broader system, and understand that nurses have the secret key to the fix, which is working as part of a team and bringing people together to drive the change.”

After all, nurses represent the largest cadre of workers in the health care profession, at more than 5 million strong, he said, offering his congratulations to the students about to graduate.

The Bedford Falls gift to WCU’s School of Nursing came as part of WCU’s “Fill the Western Sky” comprehensive fundraising campaign, an effort to raise support for the university’s academic, student engagement and athletics programs. For more information or to make a contribution to the campaign, visit WesternSky.wcu.edu, call 828-227-7124 or email advancement@wcu.edu.