SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Tena has rich and diverse experience in maternal and child nursing – including providing clinical services to community health clinics, coordinating a school-based program for pregnant and parenting teenagers, and serving as OB/Pediatric nursing faculty within an RN program. While working as a public health nurse, Tena received a full scholarship to become one of the state of Oklahoma’s first Women’s Health Nurse Practitioners. Continuing her work in public health, Tena went on to earn an M.S. in Nursing with emphasis in Community Health and Management. She then began a 25-year teaching career while continuing clinical nursing part-time. Tena’s work with postpartum mothers and babies ignited her passion for assisting those vulnerable couplets with breastfeeding and led to her recent work as a certified lactation consultant and clinical mentor to student nurses. To prepare her for the next phase of her career, Tena is commencing the DNP program at the Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in summer 2016. Her focus will include quality improvement measures to impact breast feeding outcomes for Oklahoma families including veterans and their dependents. Tena is married to an Air Force veteran and appreciates the service and sacrifice of all American veterans.