A Tradition of Nursing

In spring of 1964 the first graduates of the Lenoir-Rhyne College School of Nursing crossed the stage to collect their bachelor’s degrees and embark on their careers. In the 60 years since, Lenoir-Rhyne College became Lenoir-Rhyne University, and the School of Nursing offered some of the university’s first graduate degree programs, including the only doctoral program, the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), which started in 2019.

Lenoir-Rhyne was the fifth institution in North Carolina to offer a bachelor’s degree in nursing and the first in Western North Carolina, placing LR nursing graduates at the forefront of shaping healthcare in the region from the program’s start. In addition to providing quality clinical care, LR nursing alumni have been mainstays in supervisory and administrative positions in Catawba County’s two major hospitals — Frye Regional Medical Center and Catawba Valley Medical Center — as well as assuming leadership roles for hospitals in surrounding counties. They run county health departments, oversee hospice care and residential aging communities, treat patients as members of private medical practices and provide a host of other services in a range of facilities. 

In short, patients within the radius of the Lenoir-Rhyne campus directly benefit from the knowledge, caring and professionalism that have defined more than 60 years of nursing tradition at LR.

“I think at the heart of nursing is caring and compassion,” said Kerry Thompson, Ph.D., dean of the College of Health Sciences and former chair of the School of Nursing. “In the classroom, I want to foster open discussion. I want to have an environment where students can come and ask any question. One of my passions is to watch our students grow from having very little knowledge to entering the profession fully prepared. A lot of development happens in a few years.”

For current School of Nursing Chair Tabitha Toney ’99, Ph.D., that development starts in nursing school and continues for a lifetime.

“As you grow you get so many experiences, so it's kind of like a toolbox. You put each new experience in there,” she said. “I've been a nurse for 25 years, and I remember the first birth I experienced as a new graduate. I remember all the details. You pull things like that forward and share them, building the next generation who can share their experiences in turn.”

Striving for excellence
Well into the 1960s, nurses throughout North Carolina — and the rest of the United States — received training through three-year diploma programs based in working hospitals, such as the one established at Grace Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina, in 1910. As Bachelor of Science in nursing programs became more accessible and desirable, the hospital schools joined forces with nearby undergraduate programs. 

.As a result, the early nursing program at LR, chaired by Frances Farthing, Ph.D., combined rigorous study in the liberal arts with the immersive practical experience of a hospital school. Nursing students at LR attended classes on the Hickory campus for their first two years, then spent their junior and senior years in residence at Grace Hospital, completing their clinical rotations.

“In our first year we focused on fundamentals, our first look at what nursing would really be like — which encouraged some of us to keep going and showed others they’d be happier in another major,” shared Martha Hauser ’70, M.S., who served as chief nursing officer at Davis Regional Medical Center in Statesville, North Carolina, from 1977 to 1999. “The faculty had high expectations, but all that structure prepared us for a clinical world where the standards are high.”

The liberal arts curriculum in the first two years also comes with profound benefits. Nickcola Sullivan ’96, MBA ’03, M.S., followed 10 years of clinical and administrative success at Caldwell Memorial Hospital in Lenoir, North Carolina, with a stint in hospice nursing and a few years of travel nursing, which took her to Anchorage, Alaska, Rutland, Vermont and Albuquerque, New Mexico. She earned her Master of Science as a primary care nurse practitioner at Duke University in 2014 and now serves as a clinical coach training other nurse practitioners to offer primary care in long-term care facilities around North Carolina.

“I was the first person in my family to go to college, and I’ve had lots of flexibility and opportunity in my career because of the foundation I built at LR,” Sullivan said. “Every clinical experience made an impact, but it’s more than just nursing. Studying other subjects built my critical thinking and opened up my world in ways that have built my career.”

The program’s high academic standards are also supported by years of data dating back to the 1990s. More recently, graduates posted first-time passing rates of 98 percent in 2022 and 2023 for the National Board Licensure Examination (NCLEX) and the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) certification exam. The class of 2024 earned a 100 percent first-time passing rate for both. 

“I meet with deans and directors from all around the state, and I’ve worked with many of them to bring up their own passing rates,” shared Thompson. “They know our reputation all over North Carolina, and it’s expanding as our graduates are moving out into the rest of the country.”

Building confidence and experience
Beyond the academics, one of the most valuable assets of the School of Nursing is less easily summarized in data and transcripts — deep roots in the community. Many of those roots form while faculty members are working for providers throughout the region before choosing to teach.

“I was a preceptor for LR students in oncology at Catawba Valley Medical Center before I joined the faculty here full time in 2015. Our own clinical experiences give us the knowledge of what hospitals want in clinical practice. We build on that knowledge,” shared instructor Kim Sloop ’01, M.S. ’15. “When we bring stories of our own experiences into the classroom, those stories stick with the students.”

Current nursing students get plenty of hands-on experience in their coursework, practicing with each other and running simulations in labs on the LR campus and at the state-of-the-art ValleySim Hospital at Catawba Valley Community College in partnership with Catawba Valley Medical Center. Students then complete clinical rotations at hospitals and healthcare providers in Catawba and the surrounding counties and as far away as Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“A lot of the connections come from faculty, but it’s even more about the students,” Thompson explained. “When we were first placing students at Baptist, once they saw our students on the units, the administrators were calling us ready to hire them. They see the professionalism and quality of the students on rotations, and that cements those connections.”

These positive impressions are reinforced with collaboration between university faculty and hospital staff through advisory councils and meetings where they evaluate, reflect and improve on processes every semester. 

“When we’re doing clinical rotations as students, we’re maintaining the reputation our faculty have spent years building. I did an undergraduate clinical rotation in hospice with a nurse practitioner at Carolina Caring, which is where I work now. When I was assigned here for a rotation in graduate school, she remembered me,” shared Kailee White ’21, DNP ’24. “LR nursing students make an impression, with work ethic, with compassion. Those aren’t my words — that’s the reputation we have in the community.” 

These connections to the community improve patient outcomes and patient confidence.

“We want people to feel that when they have a nurse from Lenoir-Rhyne, they will get the best care possible,” said Sloop. 

A family unit
Nursing students at LR are a close-knit group on a campus known for its sense of community. Whether that closeness evolved from living and working in the dormitory at Grace Hospital back in the early days of the program or around a kitchen table in Highland Hall where Professor Emeritus Mary Jo Danner cooked for her students, the family of LR nurses persists as a defining quality of the program.

“I always felt supported as a student in this program, and when I joined the faculty, I learned we’re there for each other as well,” Toney said. “We have an open-door policy with students, we review every test with them, they’re doing philanthropic work together. It’s not just about academic support. We’re supporting the whole person here. And when they graduate, we remind them to extend that same kindness and support to the new nurses they’ll work with in the future.” 

“The family dynamic starts with the leadership and the work ethic the faculty models for the students,” shared associate professor Michelle Ollis ’01, M.S. ’15, DNP ’21. “We spend a lot of time together, and having so many LR graduates on the faculty builds that closeness. We’re blessed to have the unity we have.”

That dynamic is appreciated by current students like Mary Elizabeth Carter ’26. 

For Carter, becoming a nurse has been a lifelong dream. As a student at University Christian High School, adjacent to Lenoir-Rhyne’s campus, she got an early look at life at Lenoir-Rhyne through enrolling in college-level coursework. But it was a presentation by Thompson during an admission event that convinced Carter to enroll in the program.

“It was apparent in the way Dr. Thompson spoke of the nursing alumni that she truly knew her students and had developed long-lasting relationships with them. She mentioned one who was continuing her education to become a nurse practitioner in LR’s DNP program, another one who had just gotten married to a fellow LR alum and even one who had just accepted a travel nurse contract in Hawaii,” Carter shared. “I knew in that moment that LR was exactly where I was supposed to be. The family aspect that I have come to know and love about LR was exemplified by her continued familiarity with her students and their journeys through the nursing world.”