Newtown VNA Awards Three Scholarships

The Newtown Visiting Nurse Association has presented scholarship checks to three recipients, each of whom has completed her second year and clinical portion of her bachelor of science nursing degree (BSN) program. All three are members of Newtown High School’s Class of 2008.

Natalie Clavette has received the Janice B. VanSyckle Scholarship.

She is attending Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Penn., and will be entering the clinical portion of her studies when she begins her junior year. This will include two full days of hospital-based instruction per week. She will also be attending the Student Nurses Association of Pennsylvania State Convention in the fall.

Natalie is a member of the Student Nurses Association of Pennsylvania and the National Student Nurses Association. During her first two years at Duquesne, she was involved in a community-based clinical program that involved helping at a clinic in a homeless shelter, teaching at Allegheny County Jail, and administered flu shots following church services in downtown Pittsburgh.

Christine Czarnecki has received a Newtown Visiting Nurse Association Scholarship. Christine is attending the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and will be starting her first clinical rotation in the area of subacute and chronic illness in the adult when she returns for her junior year in the fall.

She hopes to study abroad, in Cape Town, South Africa, during her senior year, where she will work with childbearing families.

She works in UConn’s residential life department and will be a patient care assistant for a student with muscular dystrophy this coming fall.

Kelly Tenney has also received a Newtown Visiting Nurse Association Scholarship. She is attending Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., majoring in nursing with a minor in psychology.

Kelly has made Dean’s List regularly during her first two years at Endicott. This past year she worked as a student nurse on a long-term rehab floor at Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital in Haverhill, Mass., as well as on a medical-surgical floor at Union Hospital in Lynn, Mass. She has also gained experience working in interventional radiology, the emergency room, and the operating room.

This coming fall Kelly will be working at Beverly Hospital and Salem Children’s Hospital for her maternity and pediatric rotations, respectively.

In addition to academics, Kelly is a member of the Endicott College softball team, where she helped lead the Gulls to their eighth straight Commonwealth Coast Conference championship this past spring. She was recently named to the Endicott Varsity Club for maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher as a student-athlete.