IGNITE IMPACT
Supporting PhD students Sherri Mendelson, PhD, MS ’84, BSN ’77, says her success as a UIC Nursing master’s degree student was due to the encouragement of classmates and faculty; they even rallied behind her as she brought her newborn daughter to class the week after she was born. “I was supported physically, financially and emotionally during my master’s degree at University of Illinois Chicago,” she says. “Without that support, I probably couldn’t have done it.” Mendelson, now nurse scientist and Magnet program director at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, California, wanted to pass on that same sense of support to a future generation of nurse scientists. She and her husband made a gift in 2020 to endow the Tom and Sherri Mendelson PhD Awards. The inaugural awards were given to five doctoral students in April. “My current position as research scientist for a large hospital system really helped me understand how much nurses need support in order to do their research and to move forward in understanding evidence-based practice and research,” she says.
THE FIVE INAUGURAL RECIPIENTS ARE: Elizabeth Rios RESEARCH TOPIC: Psychosocial factors that may influence the development of type 2 diabetes among Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American women living in the United States ADVISOR: Lauretta Quinn, PhD ’96, RN, CDE, FAHA, FAAN Sungwon Park TOPIC: Factors RESEARCH TOPIC influencing adherence to health behaviors recommended by a metabolic syndrome management program ADVISORS: Carol Ferrans, ADVISORS PhD ’85, MS ’82, RN, FAAN; Quinn, PhD ’96, RN, Lauretta Quinn CDE, FAHA, FAAN Asha Mathew Solomon TOPIC: RESEARCH TOPIC Symptom-cluster experiences in oral cancer ADVISOR: Ardith Doorenbos, ADVISOR PhD, RN, FAAN Wiphawadee Potisopha TOPIC: RESEARCH TOPIC Understanding treatment-seeking decisions in acute stroke survivors ADVISOR: Patricia Hershberger, ADVISOR PhD ’05, FNP-BC, FAAN Manassawee Srimoragot TOPIC: Sleep RESEARCH TOPIC characteristics and cardiovascular disease risk among Asian women
Mendelson and her husband, Tom, met on the Urbana campus, where she was preparing to study nursing and he, agriculture. She is pictured here on their farm in Wisconsin.
ADVISOR: Bilgay Izci Balserak, PhD
VITAL SIGNS FALL 2021 | 25
