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IGNITE Impact
Finding meaning in tragedy
The Goldsmiths are endowing a faculty scholar in memory of their sons.
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With more time at home during the pandemic, Beverly Bernstein Goldsmith, MS ’73, BSN ’69, began reflecting on how the critical thinking skills and motivation she developed at the UIC College of Nursing helped her cope with life’s challenges, past and present.
“Life is a journey and sometimes it is a challenging one,” says Goldsmith. “All you can do is to prepare yourself as best you can to cope with whatever life presents, and hopefully you have the skills to deal with what comes your way.”
Goldsmith and her husband of 42 years, Barry, have chosen to endow a faculty scholar position in psychiatric mental health nursing.
"My years at the college and my continued connection with it better prepared me to deal with life’s tragedies and continue my journey on a productive and meaningful path,” she says.
The gift is being given in memory of their two late sons, Adam and Jacob, and is being directed to the area of Beverly’s expertise. She worked as an adult psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner for many years in the Washington, D.C., area. “I wanted to be sure that not just our lives had meaning,” she says. “By giving this gift, we are giving lasting meaning to Adam's and Jacob’s lives.” The Goldsmiths older son, Adam, had a neurodegen- erative disorder. As his disease progressed, Goldsmith spent time searching for a diagnosis and treatment, all the while providing him with a comfortable daily life. Although a diagnosis was never found by his death at age 18, the family learned 15 years later that his disorder was caused by a genetic mutation. Their younger son, Jacob, also struggled emotionally with his brother’s illness and his own addiction for 15 years. He died at age 31. Goldsmith says she hopes the endowed faculty scholar gift will help to enrich the science behind psychiatric mental health nursing and that the beneficiaries of the gift will teach those approaches to new nurses and nurse practitioners entering the field. “My hope is this gift will in some way help other families who are coping with progressive neurological or addiction issues,” Goldsmith says. “Over the years, the recipient scholars will pass on their knowledge to many other nurses giving care.”
Beverly grew up modestly in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood and says she feels lucky to be able to make the gift to UIC Nursing, adding that by doing so, it allows her to give “more meaning” to her own journey and give “dignity and respect” to her late sons and their journeys.
Barry and Beverly Goldsmith
meaningful path." Goldsmith was in one of the first graduating classes of the community mental health nursing graduate program at UIC, started by Gertrude Stokes. During her studies, she learned the importance of research-driven nursing practice. Goldsmith, a former assistant professor at UIC Nursing, was part of a research team that explored relationships before marriage, spearheaded by former dean Helen Grace, PhD, MS ’65, FAAN, and she co-authored a chapter with UIC Nursing professor emerita Kathleen Knafl in the book, “Families Across the Life Cycle.”
“I realized that 10 years of my adult life was spent at the College of Nursing,” she says. “The college and its faculty inspired me and helped me develop into who and what I am. Over the years, I have come to value the importance of all nurses pursuing a baccalaureate degree and using a theoretical framework in practice. I owe a debt of gratitude to the entire faculty, and especially former dean Mary Kelly Mullane for leading and pioneering this educational track at the university more than 50 years ago.”
‘A world of difference’ A Memorial Health System Scholarship allowed Cristal Gutierrez, BSN ’20, to overcome financial challenges and personal heartbreak to get her BSN.
During Cristal Gutierrez’ last way various healthcare workers year of nursing school, her interacted with her mom over mother’s health began to the years sparked her interest in decline. Her mom had a complex becoming a nurse—one who could cocktail of medical problems, give compassionate, holistic and including epilepsy, Crohn’s evidence-based care to even the disease, cardiac disease and renal most complex patients. insufficiency. Gutierrez, a student in Springfield, quit her job so she could “I grew up watching some nurses spend her spare time traveling to work well with my mother, as they Chicago to help with her mom’s care. tried to understand her needs, and we also encountered some that A first-generation college student, did not make us feel welcomed or Gutierrez has three older siblings comforted,” she says. “Experiencing and relied on that job to pay for that with my mom inspired me to school. She says when she found become a great nurse and work out she would receive a scholarship alongside my own ‘difficult’ patients from the Memorial Health System and families while they’re in their Scholarship Fund, “it made a world most vulnerable states.” of difference.” When her mom died in fall 2019— “[It] took the stress of paying for Gutierrez’ last year of nursing school needs off my shoulders in school—she had to make a difficult a time that I had no other financial decision. means to support my dreams of becoming a nurse,” she says. “I could either take a break from school and find a job as a nurses’ Gutierrez says her mother’s aid to help my family back home, or co-morbidities made her a continue and finish my last year of challenging patient. Watching the college,” she says.
She decided to head back to school, and in spring of 2020, she graduated with her bachelor of science in nursing degree. Gutierrez says the scholarship gave her more than financial support; it also gave her an important morale boost.
“I thought of all the people rooting for me—those I knew, and also didn’t know,” she says. “I could not let all of the people supporting me down.”
“The scholarships I have received here at UIC are phenomenal. I have two teenagers, and I never wanted my return to school to impede anything they needed. The scholarships helped ease the burden. Instead of having to work extra shifts while going back to school, it has allowed me to be at home, with my family, while managing my courses.”
Michael Ann Bevill, DNP student, neonatal nurse practitioner program; recent recipient of the Traut Family Scholarship and Mitzi L. Duxbury Perinatal Nursing, Neonatal Nursing, and Midwifery Scholarship
Carrying on a legacy A group of nurses and former co-workers came together to honor Joann Deagosteno, BSN ’77, with a scholarship.
(L-R) Ella Straka, Karen Dalal and Joann Deagosteno in Las Vegas
When things got a little crazy during the night shift in the old University of Illinois Hospital, Joann Deagosteno, BSN ’77, was always there with a laugh.
“Joann would come down the hall and we would give each other a look,” recalls her longtime friend Karen Dalal, BSN ’75. “She would start singing the Four Seasons song, ‘Oh, What a Night,’ and we would start laughing. She had a way of making everything fun.”
Deagosteno passed away in February 2020, and to honor her memory, Dalal and 13 former coworkers decided to start a scholarship fund at UIC Nursing, When they learned about it, family members of the late Ella Straka, BSN ’77, another friend and classmate of Deagosteno, also made gifts to the fund.
Dalal says she was proud of how a group of retired nurses came together to create the fund.
“People think you need a lot of money to create a scholarship,” she says. “But smaller amounts of money can help tremendously.”
In addition to working together on 7 East, a surgical wing at UI Hospital, and later in the emergency room, Dalal and Deagosteno were also roommates and travel companions, and Deagosteno was a bridesmaid in Dalal’s wedding.
“Joann was just what I think of as an ideal nurse: high standards, very effi cient, very personable,” Dalal says. “I think her patients always felt they were the highest priority. She was someone you not just enjoyed working with, but someone you wanted to emulate.”
Deagosteno grew up on Chicago’s South Side and attended South Suburban College for her associate’s degree in nursing before transferring to UIC for her bachelor’s. Dalal says cost is the reason Deagosteno started at a community college, and the scholarship will be given preferentially to transfer students and those from the South Side.
“Both of us were people who came from working class backgrounds,” Dalal says. “College can seem out of reach for a lot of people. My hope is that this may help push someone through, or maybe it will stimulate someone else to do something similar.”
Gift will support faculty, staff and students in Urbana, the college’s second-largest campus.
Peter Kale, BSN ’79, APRN, was part of the push to legally recognize nurse practitioners in Illinois two decades ago, and he spent more than 20 years as a devoted preceptor to Urbana’s UIC Nursing students.
A desire to ensure nursing students continue to get the best possible training to be leaders in healthcare inspired him to give a $25,000 unrestricted gift to the Urbana campus this year.
“I’ve always felt a connection to the College of Nursing,” he says. “I saw the program in Urbana was in a grow- ing phase, and I wanted to assist the BSN program. I saw the need here.”
More than a third of UIC’s BSN students graduate from the Urbana campus. (The others attend in Chicago or Springfi eld.) Because Kale’s gift is unrestricted, it could go toward supporting faculty, scholarships, simulation lab equipment, or anything deemed necessary to enhance the education being delivered at that campus.
“We are so appreciative of this gift and the fl exibility to use it to address critical needs at our campus,” says Krista Jones, DNP ’11, MS ’07, RN, PHNA-BC, director of UIC Nursing’s Urbana campus.
VISIT go.uic.edu/givetonursing to read Kale's full story and meet more Faces of Philanthropy
Kale at the UIC Nursing 2019 All-Alumni REUNION
