Courtney Davis '06, MSN, RN
"St. Ambrose is the place if you want to be treated like a person-and to be in a program where people want you to succeed."
"At my other colleges, the professors weren't around outside of class. At Ambrose, I called my professors at home many nights with questions. That was never a problem."
For transfer student Courtney Davis, St. Ambrose wasn't just a place to "finish up." It was a place to start. In her successful career, she worked as an occupational health nurse at Tyson Foods and earned a master's in nursing from Walden University. Now she teaches nursing at Chattahoochee Technical College in Georgia.
I was what one might call a "hop-around student." I took a lot of classes at a college in Illinois and one semester of nursing at Scott Community College. But transferring was easy. St. Ambrose walked me through the steps. I met with a professor. I submitted my application and was admitted in a couple weeks. It took me a while to decide where I wanted to be, but Ambrose was certainly the right decision for me.
I have to admit that I struggled through the Research Utilization Project class, but it was worth it. We analyzed the scientific literature about postpartum depression. In my job with Tyson, I read a lot of research, so I became known as the nerd nurse! I was the one saying, ‘Wow, did you know hospitals are doing this?' Once I started my master's degree, I called my Ambrose research instructor and thanked her for being so tough. It really helped me understand the concepts of research.
St. Ambrose nurses are known for having a good rapport with the community. They are prepared to think on a deeper level and to pull all the pieces together. Their critical thinking is intact when they arrive on the job because it's threaded through the whole program.
As a student at St. Ambrose, I led some nursing labs and discovered I had a knack for teaching. Students related to me. I was able to show them tricks about how I get things done on the job. I'd show them the different angles of viewing the tympanic membrane in the ear, for example. I love seeing students' faces light up when they get it.
My passions are nursing and teaching, so I've combined them in this job. Someday I hope to have a PhD and a tenured position at a university. That's my goal.
Let me put it this way. When I lived in Iowa, my son hurt himself one weekend playing baseball, so we had to go the emergency room. I knew four of the nurses there. Three were my fellow classmates, and one was a student in my lab class!
