Ashley Rowland

How do you teach children with serious, chronic health conditions the skills they need to care for themselves over a lifetime? That’s the focus of a new, national study led by Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing Associate Professor Monique Ridosh. Her study, “Family Assessment and Momentary Evaluation,” or FAME, examines how children with spina bifida learn to manage their condition as they grow up—and the role their families play in helping them.

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.