“This is my Greatest Accomplishment”: Assumption Nurses Share Their Journeys
In 2019, in response to an increased demand for well-trained, patient-centered nurses, Assumption announced the development of a new program: a Bachelor of Science in nursing.
The first cohort of students began in the fall of that year, and since then, the program has now blossomed into an extremely successful one, fulfilling the vision of Christopher Froelich ’77, for whom the School of Nursing is named, to form generations of highly educated nursing professionals. Three classes of students have successfully completed their undergraduate nursing programs through the Froelich School of Nursing.
Three nurses—two from the first graduating class, and one from the most recent graduating class—shared how Assumption has changed their lives.
Eleni Vozikis ’23: Preparing to Precept
From a young age, Eleni Vozikis ’23 knew that she wanted to care for others, a desire that came from a close family life.
“I’ve always liked taking care of people,” she says. “My family is from Greece, so I have a very close relationship with my grandparents. I feel like I grew up in a role where I was kind of taking care of them.
“I realized that it makes me feel good, being able to care for someone else. It felt fulfilling,” she continued.
Choosing Assumption, Vozikis was excited to be a pioneer—her class was set to be the first to graduate from Assumption’s new nursing program.
“I live close to campus, and I heard about the program starting,” she says. “I felt like it was going to be a whole new experience all around.”
Vozikis currently works on a medical surgical observation unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. On this unit, nurses care for patients who are not quite ready to be discharged from the hospital but do not require full inpatient admission.
“Assumption did a really good job placing us in clinicals—we worked in a wide variety of units, and I had the opportunity to see so many different areas of nursing: psych, maternity, med-surg,” she says. “I did a preceptorship in the emergency department, and that experience helped me feel more confident starting off in nursing.”
Precepting, a structured mentoring relationship in healthcare where an experienced professional provides supervision, training, and support to a student or new employee, has become one of Vozikis’ greatest professional passions.
“It’s honestly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career so far,” she says. “I’m at the point now where I’m comfortable being a nurse, and I feel like my favorite part is getting to train new nurses. I know how to approach them when they’re scared or overwhelmed.”
Vozikis, who started her nursing career on a floor where she had clinical rotations, said that it helped ease her transition into the field.
“Because of that, it was an easy transition from nursing school to the real job. I was already familiar with the floor—I knew some of the people, and it helped me to be prepared.”
Beginning this month, Vozikis is continuing her education by working towards becoming a nurse practitioner through classes at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
Molly Jordan ’25: From Clinicals to the Cardiac Floor
Growing up, Molly Jordan ’25 had several strong role models in nursing—something that inspired her to pursue a career in the field.
“My mom is a nurse, and so are a lot of my close family members,” she says. “And some of the people I was very close to experienced long-term stays in the hospital. It was always the nurses who made me feel comfortable. They always made me confident in the care my family members were getting—and that everything was going to be okay.
“I wanted to be that for someone else. Nursing has always been a big part of my life, and I’ve always been interested in science and school—so the profession combined everything I was interested in.”
Jordan was drawn to Assumption’s burgeoning program by a sense of community that permeates the rest of the University.
“When I toured Assumption, the nursing building was just scaffolding,” she says. “I knew I wanted a smaller, Catholic school, because my faith is an important part of my life. I looked at similar schools, but when I visited Assumption, it felt like home. When I came for accepted students’ day and met with some of my future professors, I knew it was the place I was meant to be. I was very welcomed from the beginning.”
In November 2020, the scaffolding Jordan had seen on her tour became fully realized with the opening of the state-of-the-art Richard J. and Sophia Catrambone Health Sciences Center. The vision that the Catrambones had for the building, and for the future competent and compassionate healthcare professionals that would learn within its classes, came to life—and Jordan, along with every other nurse, physician assistant, and healthcare professional that graduate from Assumption, is proof of that.
In Catrambone’s halls and labs, the same professors Jordan had met as a prospective student were there to help her form the connections that made nursing click for her.
“I’ve always been a very hands-on learner. I could read something, I could watch a video, but I never really grasped the information until I was doing it,” she says. “Sim[ulation] lab was where I really made those connections—I even had professors who offered to work things out in the lab with me when we didn’t have one scheduled for the week.
“I truly don’t think I would be where I am today if it wasn’t for their constant support and encouragement—especially Professor Lindsay Guertin, who runs our sim lab. All of the professors always believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. I am so grateful for them. If I had to do it all over again, I would choose Assumption again in a heartbeat.”
Now a cardiac nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, she credits Assumption for giving her such a strong start.
“We always had a busy, regimented schedule, but looking back, I’m really grateful for that time and the organizational skills and the flexibility that I learned,” Jordan says.
As a cardiac nurse, Jordan is in a high-intensity environment, caring for patients with a variety of different needs and illnesses. The skills she learned as an undergraduate prepared her to be ready for something different every single day.
“My first med-surg clinical through Assumption was on a cardiac telemetry floor, and at first, I said, ‘I am not doing cardiology, that’s way too much.’ But the more I went, I realized it wasn’t as scary, and I started to really enjoy learning about it. There are so many things you can do related to cardiology, and so many different reasons you could need a cardiac care team, and I like that you never know what kind of patients you are going to have.”
Meredith Godere ‘23: A Passion for Patient Care
Before beginning her journey as an undergraduate, Meredith Godere ’23 had an important choice to make: did she want to study teaching or nursing?
“I always knew I wanted to help people,” she says. “But I was a CNA after high school, and the patient care was awesome, and I got a lot of satisfaction from it—so I chose nursing.”
Godere soon learned, however, that she didn’t actually have to make that choice—she can, and will, be both a nurse and a teacher, as she is currently enrolled in a Master of Science in Nursing program at Worcester State University focused on nursing education.
“Now, I can have the best of both worlds,” she says.
Assumption’s nursing program has helped her both in her current career as a per diem nurse at two hospitals, UMass Memorial HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital and UMass Memorial’s University Campus, and while she takes her master’s level courses at Worcester State.
“We had a lot of specific classes that were really critical—I don’t see a lot of schools offering an ethics class or a moral issues in medicine class,” Godere says. “Those classes really took nursing and made you take a step back and look at the patient as a whole and the person as a whole.
“A lot of the courses were very, very difficult, but that was also something that prepared me. I was not a strong test taker, but the way Assumption did their testing and preparation for the NCLEX [National Council Licensure Examination] was really helpful for me, and I passed it on the first try,” she continued.
She wasn’t the only student to benefit from Assumption’s exemplary test preparation—each student in Godere’s class passed the NCLEX that year, an incredible statistic for a pioneer nursing cohort.
In addition to her studies, Godere became deeply involved with the student life of the at Assumption—she was a Resident Assistant, the vice president of the Student Nursing Association, and worked in the athletic department. All of these activities, she says, helped develop her professionally, and helped her to learn how to balance conflicting priorities.
“Being an RA taught me how to communicate with people effectively,” Godere says. “It also taught me time management. I would have duty twice a week, and I would have exams, so I’d have to balance when to study. Those skills definitely translate to nursing.”
Her favorite part of her career is something that Assumption helped to shape—caring for and getting to know patients on a wholistic level.
“I love patients, I love talking to people, I love getting to know everybody’s stories,” Godere says. “A lot of time throughout my day when I work at the hospital is spent sitting with them, talking with them, getting to know them, making them feel heard. That’s something that’s very important to me—it fulfills me as a person.”