2012 Alumni Awards

2012 alumni awards

The NAA award winners, shown with Dean Linda McCauley, are Rose Cannon (left), Rebecca Wheeler, Anita Rich, and Marcia Stanhope. Rich is the first recipient of the Excellence in Nursing Service Award.

The Nurses' Alumni Association (NAA) presented the following honors during Homecoming 2012. These annual awards recognize alumni and friends who advance the School of Nursing and the nursing profession.

Distinguished Nursing Achievement Award

Dr. Marcia Stanhope 71MN is the Good Samaritan Endowed Professor and Chair in Community Health at the University of Kentucky's College of Nursing, where she also holds the title of University Public Scholar. She has served on the UK nursing faculty since 1981. This year, she retired as associate dean of nursing, one of many roles she has held in a career spanning nearly 50 years. Stanhope is regarded as a public health nursing icon and is the senior author of Public Health Nursing: Population-Centered Health in the Community. Now in its eighth edition, it is one of the most widely used community health textbooks in the world. Stanhope has received a number of honors, including the American Nurses Credentialing Center's President Award and the Creative Achievement Award from the Public Health Nursing Section of the American Public Health Association. She is also 
a 1988 fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Award of Honor

Rose Cannon 74MN 95PhD has more than 37 years of experience in maternal and newborn nursing practice and education. Now retired as clinical associate professor, she remains a tireless advocate for the school. She mentored students in the Shadow a Nurse program, which gives students hands-on clinical experience by working alongside nursing alumni. She has preserved the history of the school by collecting oral histories of retired nursing faculty and helped plan the nursing school's centennial celebration in 2005. She has been a leader in the NAA, the Georgia Nurses Association, the International and Southeastern Lactation Consultant associations, and Sigma Theta Tau International.

Excellence in Nursing Service Award

Anita Rich 81N is deeply committed to serving vulnerable populations around the globe. She has embarked on numerous medical missions to some of the world's most impoverished countries, including Nicaragua, Iraq, and Mongolia. She has transported patients from Honduras, Uganda, Kosovo, and Mongolia for Children's Heart Project/Good Samaritan's Purse, which brings children and their mothers to the United States for lifesaving heart surgeries.

In 2011, Rich formed Nurses Heart to Heart, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching advanced nursing skills in developing countries. During the past two years, her organization has taught proper CPR techniques to nearly 400 nurses and doctors in Mongolia. Rich has been a cardiac care nurse at Emory University Hospital and is now at Emory Johns Creek Hospital.

Recent Graduate Award

Rebecca Wheeler 06N 12PhD epitomizes the nursing school's values of leadership, scholarship, and social responsibility. In 2004, she became Emory's first and only president of the National Student Nurses' Association, which represents more than 45,000 students. Currently, she is president-elect of the Georgia Nurses Association and served as secretary from 2007 to 2011. She is also president of the Emory chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International.

Nationally, Wheeler has served on the National Advisory Committee of Partners Investing in Nursing's Future, a grant initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson and Northwest Health foundations. She is a member of the Congress on Nursing Practice and Economics and the American Nurses Association, serving on the work group that recently updated guidelines for safe staffing. She also has taken part in global health initiatives in Kenya and Mexico.

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