Careers In Caring: CDH announces Nursing Scholarship Winners

NORTHAMPTON — Cooley Dickinson recently made an investment in its present and its future by awarding two annual nursing scholarships to local residents.

The Edward S. Moss Scholarship was awarded to Casey Fowler of Florence, who is currently employed as a registered nurse in the CDH Emergency Department. The scholarship provides financial assistance to a current CDH employee who is advancing his or her education.

Meanwhile, Nicole Harris, a 2005 Northampton High School graduate who has enrolled in the Nursing program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, earned the Nursing Alumni Scholarship. That award was created by graduates of the former CDH School of Nursing, and is awarded to a high school junior or senior in Northampton who wants to pursue a nursing career.

Fowler is a graduate of Elms College and is currently attending UMass Worcester Graduate School of Nursing. Her interest in nursing was first piqued when she worked as a CNA at a nursing home. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy as a corpsman, she returned home and enrolled in the nursing program at Elms College, while at the same time working at Cooley Dickinson as a phlebotomist. “While drawing blood in the ED,” she writes on her application essay, “I began to put together what I had been learning in school with what was actually being done for patients. By graduation, I had set my eyes on where I wanted to work.”

Soon after, Fowler obtained her certification in Emergency Nursing, and she is close to completing the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner track at UMass.

Harris has a better feel for what she wants to do with her life than many incoming college freshmen. Having worked with elders as a volunteer with the Northampton Council on Aging and with children in a child development class, she says nursing is a natural fit for someone who has “always been emotionally drawn to helping people,” as she wrote in her application essay.

“I realize how connected I can be with people and how I want to help and change people’s lives for the better,” she continued.

The two scholarship recipients were chosen based on their academic and work history, as well as their essays, according to Judy Cote, assistant vice president of patient care services. Cote praised the full field of applicants for the scholarships. “They were all great applicants,” she says. “It was really a strong group.”