Harper Nursing Scholars Program
Forming Exceptional Nurse Leaders
Creighton’s Harper Nursing Scholars Program is a nationally competitive scholarship and leadership opportunity exclusively for students pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). This premier program seeks to develop students who excel academically into reflective and compassionate practitioners, innovative scholars, confident advocates and ethical nurse leaders. The program accomplishes this through hands-on learning, enrichment opportunities and a curriculum rooted in the Jesuit tradition.
Each year, seven to eight incoming BSN students are selected as Harper Nursing Scholars and awarded a $40,000 annual scholarship. The four pillars of the program are:
- Leadership
- Advocacy
- Research
- Service and Justice
Program Objectives
During their four years in the BSN program, Harper Nursing Scholars will grow in their pursuit of excellence as exceptional nurses and healthcare leaders. They 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.
Harper Nursing Scholars will also 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
- Seek additional opportunities for advocacy
Program Details
The scholarship provides funding for the following programming.
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
- An opportunity to participate in an undergraduate nursing research program
- Monthly dinner meetings
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, service and justice
Sophomore year:
- Legislative workshop at the Nebraska State Capitol
- Etiquette dinner
- Programming reinforcing nurses' roles in leadership, advocacy, research, service and justice
Junior year:
- 1:1 leadership coaching
- Leadership simulation
- Behind-the-scenes tour of a healthcare facility
- Selection of one of the four program pillars to explore and define a public health or healthcare-related issue that nurses can address through leadership, advocacy, research or service and justice
- Assignment to a nurse mentor who has experience in leadership, advocacy, research or service and justice; this mentor will provide guidance with the analysis of the selected public health or healthcare-related issue, root cause identification, and evidence-based solution proposal development
Senior year:
- A community health rotation including participation in Creighton’s ILAC program in the Dominican Republic during fall break, with five weeks of follow-up activities and assignments
- Leadership practicum
- Continued work 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
About the Program Director
Anne Harty, BS’97, MS/FNP’00, EdD’19
Anne Harty, EdD joined the College of Nursing faculty in fall 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.
Before joining the Creighton faculty, Harty worked as a nurse coordinator and genetic research associate, nephrology nurse practitioner, school nurse and associate director of undergraduate admissions. She was also instrumental in ensuring the passage of a bill that required all public schools in California to have a stock of epinephrine. And 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 more than 106,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
As her professors did for her, Harty models and teaches that through leadership, advocacy, research and service and justice, nurses play a critical role in caring for individuals, communities and populations to ensure 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
