Harper Nursing Scholars Program
The Harper Nursing Scholars Program is Creighton’s premier nationally competitive nursing scholarship and leadership program. Seven to eight Harper Scholars are chosen annually to receive a $40,000 annual education scholarship.
The Harper Nursing Scholars Program seeks to form academically talented students into reflective and compassionate practitioners, innovative scholars, confident advocates, and ethical nurse leaders through hands-on learning, enrichment opportunities, and a curriculum rooted in the Jesuit tradition.
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Forming Ethical Nurse Leaders
Harper Nursing Scholars will gain nursing competencies, establish a framework for ethical decisions, develop a habit of reflection, and understand the relationship between health inequity, health disparities, and social determinants of health.
Four Pillars of the Program
These pillars serve as the foundation of the program and will be taught and reinforced every year. Programming is intentionally designed to give students the opportunity to put these four pillars into action.
- Leadership
- Advocacy
- Research
- Service and Justice
Harper Nursing Scholar Program Details
The scholarship provides funding for the following programming over the Harper Nursing Scholars’ four years:
All four years:
- Jesuit values-based leadership development
- Annual networking luncheons with local and national nurse leaders
- Career development and mentoring with the program director targeted at living a balanced life
- Monthly dinner meetings
- Opportunity to participate in undergraduate nursing research program (Research in action)
Freshman year:
- Ratio Studiorum class dedicated to Harper Scholars during freshman year
- Critical issues class: NUR 170 "Caring for Yourself and Your Community"
- Overnight Ignatian leadership retreat
- Programming introducing nurses' roles in leadership, advocacy, research and service and justice
Sophomore year:
- Legislative workshop at the Nebraska State Capitol (Advocacy in action)
- Etiquette dinner
- Programming reinforcing nurses' roles in leadership, advocacy, research and service and justice
Junior year:
- 1:1 Leadership Coaching
- Leadership simulation
- Behind-the-scenes tour of a healthcare facility
- Students will be asked to "lean into" one of the four program pillars and explore and define a public health or healthcare-related issue that nurses can address through leadership, advocacy, research or service and justice
- Students will be paired with a nurse mentor who has experience in leadership, advocacy, research or service and justice. With the guidance of the nurse mentor, students will analyze the public health or healthcare-related issue, identify the root cause, and propose an evidence-based solution. (Project continued during senior year)
Senior year:
- Travel to the Dominican Republic during fall break to participate in Creighton’s ILAC program with five weeks of follow-up activities and assignments for scholars’ community health rotation(Service and Justice in action)
- Leadership practicum (Leadership in action)
- Continue working with the nurse mentor to address the chosen public health or healthcare-related issue and prepare a presentation to disseminate the proposed evidence-based solution
- Disseminate final presentation and network at a local, regional or national meeting
Educating Creighton Nurses as Leaders
Harper Nursing Scholars will be encouraged to seek leadership positions in local or national professional student nursing organizations, engage in undergraduate research with nursing faculty, participate in service opportunities through Creighton’s Schlegel Center for Service and Justice, join professional nursing organizations, and seek additional opportunities for advocacy.
Over their four years, Harper Nursing Scholars will grow in their pursuit of excellence as exceptional nurses and healthcare leaders.
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Best BSN Nursing Program in the country
Overall NCLEX rate for the past 5 years
Career Outcomes Rate
Anne Harty, BS’97, MS/FNP’00, EdD’19
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Anne Harty, EdD joined the faculty of the College of Nursing in the fall of 2022. Her Creighton journey began in 1993 when she moved from California to Omaha as an undergraduate student. She is a three-time graduate of Creighton, earning a BSN in 1997; a MS in Family Nurse Practitioner in 2000; and an EdD in Interdisciplinary Leadership in 2019. Harty worked as a nurse coordinator and genetic research associate, nephrology nurse practitioner, school nurse and associate director of undergraduate admissions before joining the Creighton faculty. She was instrumental in ensuring the passage of a bill that required all public schools in California to have a stock of epinephrine. In 2021, she and a friend built Equivax, a model for vaccine equity, which became the COVID-19 vaccine clinic model adopted by the Sacramento County Department of Public Health, delivering over 106,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. As her professors did for her, Harty models for and teaches her students that through leadership, advocacy, research and service and justice, nurses play a critical role in caring for individuals, communities and populations and ensuring the advancement, protection and promotion of nursing practice.
Harty is married to her high school sweetheart and they have twin daughters who are Creighton students.
Contact
Anne Harty, EdD, RN, FNP
Director, Harper Nursing Scholars Program
AnneHarty@creighton.edu
