SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Nursing is a second career for me; I come to it having gone back to school in 2009 after losing my job teaching theatre at the middle school level. I did my nursing prerequisites at Greenfield Community College and then completed a master’s degree in an accelerated program at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA. Throughout that program my focus was on community health and underserved populations, a focus I continue to employ in my current job. I work for a non-profit organization that provides home-based care for people with disabilities. This is a complex and often-neglected population. I currently work half-time as an RN Care Manager and half-time as the Manager of Clinical Education and Staff Development for the central and western parts of Massachusetts. I am a member of both Phi Theta Kappa and Sigma Theta Tau, the honor societies of community colleges and nursing respectively. I am committed to continuing to work with the underserved population in Massachusetts; many of the patients in my practice are veterans, suffering from both chronic medical conditions and ongoing mental health issues. I hope to bring my previous training in the Arts and Humanities to bear on research and practice into ways to use the arts to work with people suffering from chronic physical and mental conditions. In my previous life, in addition to teaching I owned a bookstore and ran a community theatre company.