Ashley Rowland

The Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing is launching a summer immersion program to support students who face barriers to success as they transition into the school’s rigorous, top-ranked undergraduate program. The inaugural Ascend into Nursing Conway Summer Institute will be held in July, hosting as many as two dozen Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students at Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus.

On a recent weekday morning, Mercedes Rojas, a third-year undergraduate at the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, stood at the front of a high school classroom and held up four tiny red cups one by one. She listed the drinks inside—tea, coffee, Red Bull, and Monster Energy—and asked the teens sitting at desks in front of her to guess the amount of caffeine in each cup.

A Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing researcher and educator who studies “nursing presence”—nurses’ ability to connect with and support their patients—was inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Nursing (AAN) this month.