Katherine Flores (Nurs ’26) is a Walentas Scholar, receiving a scholarship for first-generation college students that was created through UVA’s Jefferson Scholars Foundation with a gift from alumnus David Walentas. Flores—a voracious reader and artist who graduated at the top of her Monticello High School class—fled El Salvador at age 12. She plans to be a neonatal nurse practitioner. Now a second-year nursing student, Flores was chosen for President Jim Ryan’s 2023 “DoubleTake” storytelling event, traveled to Mexico for an art appreciation class last summer, and just returned from a J-Term course in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Active in the Latin Nursing Student Union, she’s described as a true “dynamo.” Read More.

Grayce Gunn (Nurs ’24) is a student in the School of Nursing’s accelerated bachelor’s degree program. The accelerated BSN was recently expanded with a gift from Bill and Joanne Conway. Gunn came to UVA from Old Dominion University, and since arriving has immersed herself in her studies as well as taken advantage of many extracurricular opportunities at UVA, including the Virginia Nurses Association “Lobby Days,” where she scouted and secured a clinical rotation at an emergency room in Richmond, and took a J-Term course in Italy. Her mother is an ER nurse and Gunn is following in her footsteps. Read More.

Connor Brumbaugh (Nurs ’24) was named a recipient of the DuPont Grant and the Ann Randall Bacas Memorial Scholarship. Loves? Nursing professor Ashley Apple, clinical instructor John Jimenez, working as a health unit coordinator and a patient care tech at UVA Health, and UVA’s nursing ethics courses. Brumbaugh is also completing a Distinguished Major and is president of the qRN student advocacy group. A piccolo and flute player with the University of Virginia Marching Band, Brumbaugh was inspired to be a nurse after caring for his grandfather who battled lung cancer and died in 2019. Read More.

Elise Nganou (Nurs ’24) came to UVA from Frederick Community College in Maryland to join the School of Nursing’s accelerated bachelor’s degree program. After watching her father die of stage IV cancer in her family’s native Cameroon and her experience working in high school at a Maryland nursing home, Nganou decided that a career in nursing could help her make positive changes both here and in global environments. Now studying to become a labor and delivery nurse, she is focused on making sure Black mothers at risk of dying in labor receive excellent care and hopes one day to open a birthing center. Read More.