About Me

I grew up in Caldwell, Texas, Burleson County and was born in Bryan, Texas. I attended Texas A&M University in College Station because that’s where everyone I looked up to attended college. I also thought I was going to be a physician when I grew up because my mom was a nurse. For some reason, I thought by becoming a MD, I’d never have to go to school again. After many stops and starts, I finally declared Biomedical Science as my major but I was required to retake two courses before I could move on. I thought about changing majors again.

Eventually, I landed in Wildlife and Fisheries Science where I spent many hours outside measuring quadrants and catching feral cats on campus. I also had the pleasure of taking an urban wildlife course where I stumbled on the work of Roger S. Ulrich who compared patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. One group looked out a window on a view of nature and one group looked out at a brick wall. Those that looked out the window on nature used less pain medicine and recovered faster. I realized I was more interested in what was happening inside the room than on the outside and I knew then that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps and become a nurse.

During my time at Texas A&M, I worked in the lab of palynologist, Gretchen D. Jones who was part of the USDA Agriculture Research Service. On this unique multidisciplinary team, Dr. Jones and her colleagues worked on solving the problem of reducing insecticide use on common cotton and corn pests including boll weevils and corn earworm moths. As a lab tech, I learned how to prepare and view specimens for a scanning electron microscope from Helga Sittertz-Bhatkar in addition to learning lab safety, managing a herbarium, gathering plants and flowers from the field, dark room techniques, and light microscopy. I also learned what it meant for a woman to have a higher degree and work and interact with a diverse team.

The next semester after graduating from Texas A&M, I entered the nursing program at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas. This was my mother’s alma mater and many of her teachers also taught me. After graduating, I worked as a staff nurse at Seton Northwest Hospital and took part in their journey to Magnet as well as the Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative. Pretty soon I found myself thinking about the next steps in my journey and applied to the PhD program at the University of Texas at Austin. I finished their program in 2011 and begin working at Texas State University in 2012.

I’m currently enrolled at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in pursuit of my certification as a family nurse practitioner. I want to use this knowledge and expertise to transform rural health care in Texas and advocate for improved access to primary care through public policy and advocacy.

When I’m not teaching nursing, thinking about nursing or talking about nursing, you’ll find me curled up with a good book, running trails, checking out a new Texas whiskey distillery or staring at the landscape in Big Bend country.

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