After working more than 20 years as a dental assistant in Tulsa, Antionette Vincent decided she needed a change.
Opportunities for career advancement had peaked and monotony settled in. Meantime, pain from sitting all day and a repetitive-use injury in her right hand persisted without relief.
At 45 and a mother of four daughters ages 21 to 26, Vincent is pursuing a nursing degree at Oral Roberts University. The oldest student in her class, she expects to graduate in 2025.
“It’s pretty hard,” Vincent says of the program. “I’ve second-guessed myself a couple of times, wondering if I’m headed in the right direction.”
Her husband, family, classmates and instructors supply the encouragement and positivity that help Vincent persevere. She’s especially grateful to instructor Maleatha James, who suggested she apply for a scholarship from the Eastern Oklahoma Black Nurses Association. James chairs EOBNA’s scholarship committee.
“Ms. James is always there to give students tools and resources,” says Vincent, a scholarship recipient. “She is forever in my heart.”
The association offers half a dozen scholarships, including two sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma’s Caring Together program.
BCBSOK’s Caring Together program builds community connections through the company’s employees and their networks. Known as community ambassadors, dozens of these partners, including EOBNA, help BCBSOK expand efforts to provide health education, support health and wellbeing, and insure more Oklahomans.
The EOBNA scholarships sponsored by BCBSOK primarily have helped students trying to balance getting an education while raising a family, says Valinda Jones, a nurse and senior manager of BCBSOK clinical operations and EOBNA member.
“It takes some determination and commitment to take care of a family and study,” she says. “That’s why these scholarships are so important. Students need the financial support because a nursing program can be quite expensive.”
BCBSOK long has been supportive of EOBNA’s effort to expand opportunities and help diversify the state’s nursing workforce, James says.
“The need is so great for patients to see caregivers who look like them,” she says. “There are so many situations where there are no African American nurses working on a hospital floor.”
Providing financial flexibility
This summer, Iceis Wiley, 22, will return to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa — this time as a nurse instead of a patient. The care she received there during a lengthy illness as a teen influenced her decision to pursue nursing.
“The peds nurses were angels,” says Wiley, a May graduate of Langston University, Oklahoma’s only HBCU (historically Black college or university). “They were the most caring and compassionate people.”
Scholarships Wiley received, including one from EOBNA, fully paid for her education, allowing her the flexibility to work when she wanted to earn extra money. She is in awe of students who juggle such as difficult field of study while paying for school and trying to support and raise a family.
“The expectations are really high,” says Wiley, who made the university’s dean’s list and named Most Outstanding Nursing Student of her class. “I feel immensely blessed.”