Angela Sweers, a Hope College sophomore and nursing major from Williamston, has won one of only 10 scholarships nationwide in the 2008 "A Nurse I Am Scholarship Program" sponsored by Cherokee Uniforms.
Selection is based on an essay written in response to the inspirational nurses film "A Nurse I Am." Entrants are asked to explain how viewing the film changed or enhanced their perception of nursing as a career and to use one of the nurses in the film as a role model in explaining why someone should purse nursing as a career. Scholarship winners each receive $2,000.
"The winning essays were thoughtful, creative and represented students whose writing skills are exceptional," said Wendell Mobley, director of Cherokee's A Nurse I Am Film & Scholarship Program. "Cherokee Uniforms appreciates the hundreds of students who participated in this year's scholarship application process."
Sweers was chosen for her essay "Nursing: A Career of Compassionate Heroism." In advocating for the career, she wrote, "Pursuing a nursing career can be synonymous with pursuing a career of heroism if all aspects of compassionate, holistic nursing care are met. Therefore, an individual who actively displays compassion, and has the desire to help others while encouraging them through some of the hardest circumstances of their lives, should consider pursuing nursing as a career."
Sweers is interested in pursuing her nurse practitioner license after Hope and is currently planning to focus in the area of labor and delivery or pediatrics. She will use the scholarship award for tuition during the forthcoming 2008-09 school year.
Her involvement in the nursing program at Hope has included membership in the Hope Student Nurses Association, and serving on the Nursing Curriculum Planning and Evaluation Committee. Her activities at the college have also included the student-organized Dance Marathon fund-raiser for Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, the College Chorus and intramurals. She is the daughter of Michael and Janice Sweers of Williamston and a 2006 graduate of Dansville High School.
Cherokee Uniforms is the leader in the design of fashionable scrubs for nurses and other health-care professionals. The company provided a grant for the production of "A Nurse I Am" as a film for nurses and nursing students out of concern over the number of nurses leaving the profession within the first few years of practice.
In addition to Hope, the schools with winners in this year's scholarship program are Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif.; the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Md.; Coppin State University in Baltimore, Md.; Pensacola Christian College in Pensacola, Fla.; Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va.; and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.