Outstanding scholars

Each year graduating Master of Nursing students are nominated for their outstanding scholarship. Taken into consideration is the student’s academic work, scholarly inquiry, and practice in relation to the application of theory and evidence-based knowledge to practice resulting in the demonstrated potential to enhance the nursing profession, nursing education, the health of the public, and/or health care.

Jennifer Okimoto, 2025

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the nursing profession has been struggling with numerous issues. Jennifer’s capstone aimed to promote a healthy work environment based on the AACN’s framework. Her project was an excellent example of connecting her academic work, scholarly inquiry, and practice.

Gretchen Rudersdorf, 2025

Gretchen values DEI-related perspectives, which are in alignment with the school’s values and missions. Through these programs and resources, she wishes to promote a more diverse nursing workforce by inspiring the future generation and introducing them to the nursing career at an earlier age. Her project has tremendous potential to enhance the nursing profession by recruiting future nurses.

Kate McMonagle, 2024

Kate developed a capstone to explore the development of institutional policies. Kate’s work is a step toward developing an awareness amongst policy makers of how and why they are writing policies and the ways in which divergent goals might result in policies that do not adequately serve their institutions. She disseminated the results of her work in a poster for Seattle Nurses Research Conference where she was awarded “Best Research Poster”. Learn more about Kate’s poster and journey in UW Medicine Huddle.

Misha Severson, 2023

Misha’s capstone project embodied the mission and values of the School. Misha collaborated with Ariadne Labs at Harvard and Cherokee Nation to evaluate and support work toward reducing perinatal health disparities in American Indian communities in Oklahoma by bringing TeamBirth to Cherokee Nation.

Nina Kirk, 2022

Nina personifies nurse education for positive change. Nina’s capstone, “Addressing Discrimination and Bias in the Nursing Workforce: Developing Learner-Centered Education” explored the experiences and perceived capabilities of RN-to-BSN students in addressing workplace discrimination and bias to identify gaps in student knowledge and skills to be developed in the course curriculum.

Ivanka Vassileva, 2021

Ivanka utilized her fieldwork to make necessary changes to the new Nurse-Driven Protocol to promote quality of care and patient safety and decrease in hospital-acquired CAUTI. Her fieldwork exemplifies the application of theory and evidence-based knowledge to practice and her academic work, scholarly inquiry, and practice demonstrated great potential to further enhance the nursing profession.

Jarick Huliganga, 2020

Jarick translated his academic work into a hospital-wide QI project that is focused on improving patient safety and public health outcomes. In collaboration with the unit personnel, he developed a standardized patient handoff tool with educational training for staff in the perioperative department at Kaiser’s Central Hospital Surgery Center.

Susan Collins, 2019

Susan translated her academic work to become the voice for nurses. She used her new voice as a graduate-prepared nurse to ensure enough nurses were at ‘the table’ when decisions impacting patient care and nurse safety were being made.

Arlyce Coumar, 2018

Arlyce has personified the Mission and Vision of the UW “to advance nursing science and practice through generating knowledge and preparing future leaders to address health.” Arlyce incorporated the paradigm of practice taught at UWB that has the global community as a partner in health care.

Updated May 2026