RWJF New Jersey Nursing Scholars Go Way Back

Neighbors Tara Lynne Parker and Maryann Magloire-Wilson recently discovered they are members of the same small group of future leaders in nurse education.

 

Tara Lynne Parker, R.N., B.S.N., and Maryann Magloire-Wilson, R.N., B.A., see each other all the time: They live in the same small community in northwest New Jersey and send their children to the same elementary school.

 

But they never expected to bump into each other at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in Princeton, N.J.—some 50 miles away from their home in Allamuchy, N.J.

 

So when Parker saw Magloire-Wilson at the first collaborative meeting of the New Jersey Nursing Initiative last fall, she did a double-take.

 

“I thought to myself, ‘What a coincidence! That woman looks just like Maryann!’” Parker recalls. “I frantically searched through our directory and sure enough, there it was—Maryann Magloire-Wilson’s name.”

 

The two women—nurses, neighbors and friends—laughed when they realized they had one more thing in common: They are both RWJF New Jersey Nursing Scholars.

 

As such, they receive full tuition and fees to attend a graduate-level nursing education program, an annual stipend of $50,000, and a laptop computer. Magloire-Wilson is enrolled at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Parker attends William Paterson University. The goal of the program is to build the supply of nurse educators in the state—a key way to ensure that New Jersey has an adequate, well-prepared nursing workforce in the future.

 

The two women also marveled at the fact that two people from a community of fewer than 4,000 residents were accepted by institutions participating in the Scholars program. “It truly is a wonder,” Magloire-Wilson says.

 

Their shared experience has given them one more thing to talk about when they bump into each other at neighborhood events or at the local school information night. “Having Tara to talk to has been an absolute blessing!” Magloire-Wilson says. “Who better would understand the demands of being a scholar, student, nurse, mother, and wife? It has been great to have a confidante that lives so close by!”