News Releases
UMSON Summer and Fall 2019 Graduates are Called to Greatness
December 18, 2019
“We celebrate you today and we anxiously anticipate the contributions you will make as the next chapter of your career unfolds. Our nation and our global society look to you to create the future of human health,” said Rear Adm. Carol A. Romano, PhD ’93, MS ’85, BSN ’77, RN, NEA-BC, FACMI, FAAN, dean and professor, Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, who served as the keynote speaker at the University of Maryland School of Nursing’s Dec. 12 Graduation ceremony.
At Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre, 220 degrees were conferred by Bruce Jarrell, MD, FACS, University of Maryland, Baltimore executive vice president, provost, and dean of the Graduate School who will soon begin his tenure as UMB interim president. This included 117 Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), 92 Master of Science, four Doctor of Nursing Practice, and three Doctor of Philosophy degrees and four certificates. At a sister ceremony at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville, Maryland, the following day, Jarrell conferred 70 BSN degrees.
“Nurses are on the frontline of protecting, promoting, and advancing the health and safety of our nation. Nurses are the heroes of health who dare to care,” Romano told the audience during her address. “Our nation needs its nurses, every one of them. Nurses promote health, nurture the human response to illness, direct the social reintegration of people’s lives, and advance the quality and safety of care.”
Student speaker Rose Catherine Vielandi, MS ’19, a graduate of the Clinical Nurse Leader master’s option, encouraged her classmates to remember where their journeys began.
“We all come from such different stages and places in our lives and yet we all have one thing in common: A few years ago, we decided to take a leap of faith. We wanted to be a part of a profession driven by compassion, selflessness, and love,” Vielandi said. “We all knew what we wanted from our professions and we were willing to fight for it.”
Romano concluded her remarks with this reminder: “This calling to serve others is demanding, it is tiring, it is stressful. And your most important contributions in making a difference in people’s lives will not always be celebrated like today, but they will be no less significant. You will touch and change lives. You will bring hope to the hopeless, and you will be called to greatness.”
top: Romano addresses the audience; bottom: graduates stand with their pinners on stage