Frontier Nursing University (FNU) President Dr. Susan Stone, DNSc, CNM, FACNM, FAAN, will give the keynote address at FNU’s commencement on Saturday, September 23, at 11:00 a.m. For the second consecutive year, commencement will be held at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky. Earlier this year, Dr. Stone announced her intention to transition into a new role as the university’s appointed Distinguished Chair of Midwifery and Nursing. Dr. Stone’s move into this role is tentatively planned to occur at the end of 2023, pending the identification of her successor. Dr. Stone has served as the president of FNU since 2001.
“Commencement is, of course, the biggest event on our calendar every year,” Dr. Stone said. “It is the culmination and celebration of the incredible work our students complete to prepare themselves to care for the people in their communities across the country. We celebrate this day with their friends and family members who have sacrificed to help their loved ones achieve this goal. We also celebrate with our faculty and staff, who routinely go above and beyond to serve our students. I am excited and humbled to have the opportunity to give the keynote address to such an amazing group of people on their special day.”
FNU’s commencement ceremony honors the nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners who have completed the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, Master in Science of Nursing degree, or Post-Graduate Certificate. FNU, which awarded 1,001 degrees in 2021 and 1,040 in 2022, expects to award more than 1,000 again this year for master’s, doctoral, and post-graduate certificate graduates.
For the third consecutive year, Frontier Nursing University (FNU) has been named one of the best colleges in the nation to work for, according to the Great Colleges to Work For® program. The results, released today in a special insert of The Chronicle of Higher Education, are based on a survey of 194 colleges and universities. In all, 72 of those institutions achieved “Great College to Work For” recognition for specific best practices and policies. Results are reported for small, medium, and large institutions, with FNU included among the small universities with 500 to 2,999 students and more than 250 employees.
Central to the grant project has been the development of strategic relationships with clinical sites in rural and underserved communities. Matching Frontier students with these sites is proving to be a success for the students, the clinical sites, and the patients. In the first year of the BHWET grant, 30 FNU students logged clinical hours at 90 clinical sites. Of those 90 clinical sites, 50 were in medically underserved areas, and 14 were in rural areas. A recent survey of those stipend recipients resulted in 21 responses. Of those 21 respondents, 15 are now employed in HRSA-designated Medically Underserved Communities, 11 provide treatment and services to individuals with Substance Abuse Disorder and/or Opioid Use Disorder, and nine are employed in a rural setting.
“Psychiatric mental health providers are so few and far between in rural, underserved areas. Our program prepares students to feel very comfortable working with patients of all ages, and we know that pediatric and adolescent psychiatric providers are extremely rare. To be able to provide those key workers in those areas is crucial. It really provides them with a potential partner pipeline of future providers.”
“My practice has benefited greatly from having students, partly because four of my graduated students have joined my team. However, my favorite part about having students is knowing that the level of care I provide improves every single day because I have to actively consider every decision to ensure that I can rationalize it to my students. This unanticipated accountability demands that my care is evidence-based and client-centered. That benefits my clients, my students, my practice, my community, and me.”
As a nurse-midwife at St. Lawrence Health System in Potsdam, New York, Dr. Megan Gagner, DNP (Class 30), APRN, CNM, is accustomed to working in a rural, underserved area. Potsdam is located in upstate New York, close to where Gagner grew up in St. Lawrence County, just 30 minutes from the Canadian border.
She was invited on the trip through her connection with a local physician assistant (PA) program offered by Clarkson University in Potsdam. Eleven of the PA program’s students – seven of whom Gagner has precepted – and three 
“It was an important experience that has changed my perception of healthcare and also my life,” Gagner said. “We don’t realize the things that are so basic for us that we take advantage of. For one week, we had cold showers, walked miles a day, and experienced no power for a couple of days. Time was nothing when we were in Nicaragua. It could take all day to be seen, and no one was upset. They would wait weeks or months to be seen and would be grateful.”
Frontier Nursing University’s (FNU) Student Veterans Group, one of six Student Interest Groups at FNU, has been accepted into the Student Veterans of America (SVA) national network.
Frontier Nursing University’s (FNU) first Preceptor Celebration Week will be held August 14-18, 2023. This event honors the important role that preceptors play in advanced practice nursing education.
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).