In 2025, Frontier Nursing University honored the 100-year anniversary of the inception of the Frontier Nursing Service. We are grateful for the alumni, students, couriers, donors, volunteers, friends, and employees who have made an incredible impact on FNU’s century-long journey. We celebrated this milestone year by capturing and sharing some of the countless stories that make up our history. Whatever your connection to FNU, we hope you enjoy these stories.
Dr. Kendra Faucett is a 2012 graduate of Frontier Nursing University’s certified nurse-midwifery (CNM) program, but her FNU story neither ends nor begins there. Long before she became a nurse-midwife, she was a doula for nine years. During that time, she attended 90 births and soon learned that clients who had midwifery care had significantly better experiences.
She went back to school to become an RN and then a nurse-midwife. She was working full-time as an RN and raising a four-year-old daughter when a friend took her to Hyden, Kentucky, to see FNU’s campus.
“We walked in the dining room and there was Kitty Ernst holding court with several students. Need I say more? Frontier here I come,” Dr. Faucett said. “The week before Frontier Bound in 2009, I learned that my adoption process was complete and that I could pick up my two sons in Haiti, ages 3 and 5.”
Dr. Faucett started graduate school with three children ages 3-5 and a job as an RN. Not only was Frontier the right place for her, but it was also likely the only place.
“The community-based education that is the brainchild of Kitty Ernst allowed me to join this profession,” said Dr. Faucett, who was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives in 2022. “It would not have been possible for me to attend a traditional brick and mortar school.”
After graduating in 2012, she worked as a full-scope CNM in Frankfort and Lexington, Kentucky. During that time, she precepted several nurse-midwifery students from Frontier and realized she enjoyed teaching.
In 2019, she joined the faculty at Frontier. From 2019-2023, she taught several different courses and was Course Coordinator of the Comprehensive Review Course. She said she found working to prepare students to pass the board exam was incredibly rewarding and that she especially loved the 1:1 tutoring to help students across the finish line. Her husband, Joshua Faucett, DNP, FNP, also taught advanced pathophysiology at that time.
Dr. Faucett, who also obtained a DNP from Yale University, left Frontier in the fall of 2023 when she was named the Specialty Director of Nurse-Midwifery at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.
