As a donor, community member or friend you may be wondering what FNU is doing in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic and what you can do to help.
We are still serving our students and honoring our Culture of Caring. Our leadership team is meeting regularly, sometimes daily, to keep our community safe and to make sure that our students are, as always, receiving a top-quality education and that we are making accommodations for the extenuating circumstances created by this global pandemic. Further, we are honoring our Culture of Caring by making sure that our staff and faculty are also supported during this time. As of today, all of our faculty and staff are working from home. We are so proud of how this community has come together and is supporting each other!
We are continually watching for official updates. Whether it is via our Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear or the CDC, we are staying on top of the information coming to us and abiding by their suggestions and orders. Once we receive the information, our leadership is evaluating what it means for our staff, faculty and students and making adjustments as quickly as possible.
Our Students and Graduates are making an impact. Many of our more than 7,000 graduates are on the frontlines of this crisis. We are, every day, receiving notes, updates, pictures and anecdotes from our alumni that make our hearts swell with pride. For instance, one graduate is providing a drive-in nurse-midwifery check-up service to ensure her patients have as little contact as possible with others. Another graduate continues to do home visits for her patients in a rural Mennonite community, and another assists ER doctors and EMS crews to intubate critical patients These stories and many more will be shared with all of you in our upcoming Quarterly Bulletin. You can also read their stories at frontier.edu/courage.
FNU is hosting virtual circle-up sessions for alumni on the third Saturday of each month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. ET. To participate, please check our alumni e-newsletter or FNU Alumni Facebook group page for details.
We will be here when this is all over. Like you, we aren't sure what the full impact is going to be on our community or the world, but we do know this - our graduates are needed and will continue to be needed now, more than ever before.
How can you help? First and foremost, you can help by following the social distancing guidelines and other recommendations from the CDC. You can also donate funds to support our students, or donate personal protective equipment. Donating to Frontier Nursing University is easy, you can donate online by clicking the link below or mail your gifts to:
Frontier Nursing University
Attn: Accounting
2050 Lexington Road
Versailles, KY 40838
Please know, your gifts and support continue to work toward our mission to provide accessible nurse-midwifery and nurse practitioner education to prepare competent, entrepreneurial, ethical and compassionate leaders in primary care to serve all individuals with an emphasis on women and families in diverse, rural and underserved populations during this time of uncertainty. Learn more about donating to Frontier Nursing University.
Until we see each other again, please take care of yourself, your families and your friends.
Face Mask Donations Needed. With the well-documented shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), FNU is collecting home-made face coverings that we will distribute to members of the FNU community. There are several resources and templates for making home-made face coverings available online. Here are the recommended guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Carrie Belin is an experienced board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and a graduate of the Johns Hopkins DNP program, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has also completed fellowships at Georgetown and the University of California Irvine.
Angie has been a full-scope midwife since 2009. She has experience in various birth settings including home, hospital, and birth centers. She is committed to integrating the midwifery model of care in the US. She completed her master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at Frontier Nursing University (FNU) and her Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves as the midwifery clinical faculty at FNU. Angie is motivated by the desire to improve the quality of healthcare and has led quality improvement projects on skin-to-skin implementation, labor induction, and improving transfer of care practices between hospital and community midwives. In 2017, she created a short film on skin-to-skin called 
Justin C. Daily, BSN, RN, has ten years of experience in nursing. At the start of his nursing career, Justin worked as a floor nurse on the oncology floor at St. Francis. He then spent two years as the Director of Nursing in a small rural Kansas hospital before returning to St. Francis and the oncology unit. He has been in his current position as the Chemo Nurse Educator for the past four years. He earned an Associate in Nurse from Hutchinson Community College and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Bethel College.
Brandy Jackson serves as the Director of Undergraduate Nursing Programs and Assistant Educator at Wichita State University and Co-Director of Access in Nursing. Brandy is a seasoned educator with over 15 years of experience. Before entering academia, Brandy served in Hospital-based leadership and Critical Care Staff nurse roles. Brandy is passionate about equity in nursing education with a focus on individuals with disabilities. Her current research interests include accommodations of nursing students with disabilities in clinical learning environments and breaking down barriers for historically unrepresented individuals to enter the nursing profession. Brandy is also actively engaged in Interprofessional Education development, creating IPE opportunities for faculty and students at Wichita State. Brandy is an active member of Wichita Women for Good and Soroptimist, with the goal to empower women and girls. Brandy is a TeamSTEPPS master trainer. She received the DASIY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty in 2019 at Wichita State University. 
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine is an Arab-disabled queer woman of color with a PhD in Nursing and an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Dr. Jamal-Eddine’s doctoral research explored spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Dr. Jamal-Eddine now serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in UIC’s Department of Disability and Human Development and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). During her doctoral program, Sabrina served as a Summer Fellow at a residential National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute at Arizona State University (2023), a summer fellow at Andrew W. Mellon’s National Humanities Without Walls program at University of Michigan (2022), a Summer Research Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (2021), and an Illinois Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities (LEND) trainee (2019-2020).
Vanessa Cameron works for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nursing Education & Professional Development. She is also attending George Washington University and progressing towards a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis on ableism in nursing. After becoming disabled in April 2021, Vanessa’s worldview and perspective changed, and a recognition of the ableism present within healthcare and within the culture of nursing was apparent. She has been working since that time to provide educational foundations for nurses about disability and ableism, provide support for fellow disabled nursing colleagues, and advocate for the disabled community within healthcare settings to reduce disparities.
Dr. Lucinda Canty is a certified nurse-midwife, Associate Professor of Nursing, and Director of the Seedworks Health Equity in Nursing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Columbia University, a master’s degree from Yale University, specializing in nurse-midwifery, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Canty has provided reproductive health care for over 29 years. Her research interests include the prevention of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities in reproductive health, promoting diversity in nursing, and eliminating racism in nursing and midwifery.
Dr. Lisa Meeks is a distinguished scholar and leader whose unwavering commitment to inclusivity and excellence has significantly influenced the landscape of health professions education and accessibility. She is the founder and executive director of the DocsWithDisabilities Initiative and holds appointments as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Learning Health Sciences and Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Nikia Grayson, DNP, MSN, MPH, MA, CNM, FNP-C, FACNM (she/her) is a trailblazing force in reproductive justice, blending her expertise as a public health activist, anthropologist, and family nurse-midwife to champion the rights and health of underserved communities. Graduating with distinction from Howard University, Nikia holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in public health. Her academic journey also led her to the University of Memphis, where she earned a master’s in medical anthropology, and the University of Tennessee, where she achieved both a master’s in nursing and a doctorate in nursing practice. Complementing her extensive education, she completed a post-master’s certificate in midwifery at Frontier Nursing University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers and serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the lead author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition).