Saturday, May 07, 2005

ECU's commencement speaker advised graduates to be leaders Saturday, a vocation familiar to the university's first doctoral graduate from the School of Nursing.

Elaine Scott, 50, is the first person to receive a doctorate from East Carolina University's nursing school. She said she is familiar with leadership, but that her new degree has given her a new perspective.

"Getting my doctorate has been transformative," Scott said. "I feel like it's just affected my whole life; the way I see the world. It opens you up to how little you really do know. You get your master's degree, and you feel you're an expert in something. You get your Ph.D, and you realize you'll spend the rest of your life learning and will never have your hands around everything, but perhaps (I) can focus on one area of nursing science and be effective."

She is one of 2,800 students who were eligible to receive degrees during ECU's 96th commencement this weekend. Individual departments held ceremonies Friday, and the university hosted two schoolwide ceremonies Saturday at Minges Coliseum. Henry G. Williamson Jr., retired chief operating officer for BB&T Corp., gave the keynote address.

"I would like to challenge you as you leave ECU ... to embrace the notion that you are a leader," Williamson said.

Scott's graduation marks a historic point for the nursing school, said Dean Phyllis Horns.

"It's a very important milestone for our school," Horns said. "(Scott) was just a very exciting student to work with. She was very motivated. She certainly had a commitment to move forward with her pursuit of the program as quickly as she could to meet some of her other life needs and she was just a model student."

Scott has been married for 25 years and is a mother of four. She is experienced as a hospital nurse, Medicare specialist, home health administrator, business owner and instructor in the School of Nursing. She's originally from Kinston but currently lives on Topsail Island.

She commuted the 95 miles from Topsail Island once a week while pursuing her doctorate. She received a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1977 and a master's degree in nursing administration in 1991 – both from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Williamson told the graduates that many of their great moments in life will not be planned.

"Your moments of most profound impact and influence will come when you do not expect them," Williamson said. "You will rarely get to plan and orchestrate your moments of impact."

Scott said that many of the milestones in her life have been planned. She even planned to give birth to her 15-year old daughter, Sara, during winter break while pursuing her master's degree.

"I've been an intentional person," Scott said. "I knew that I wanted to get my Ph.D. when I finished undergraduate school, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it financially. Then you get married and have your children. Through all of that, I always intended to move toward an academic career, because I was very drawn to that."

Scott is currently interviewing for a faculty position at ECU and has sent her resume to other universities.

"I would really love to come back to East Carolina as a faculty member," Scott said.

She wrote her dissertation on nursing job influences, career satisfaction and reasons why nurses leave their jobs and the profession. She found the decisions were strongly associated with length and quality of orientation in the first two years after graduation.

"It's kind of like coming around full circle," Scott said. "That was the most challenging time for me as a nurse – when I was a young new graduate going into the real world and trying to take care of patients."

ECU implemented its nursing Ph.D. program in the fall of 2002. There are 14 students in the program currently, and six or seven will be admitted this fall, Horns said.

The program trains nurses to be scientists and researchers, Horns said.

"We have a program of study that equips nurses with doctorates to conduct research in a variety of problem areas in our field," Horns said. "They go on to leadership roles in government agencies and private agencies and also faculty roles in schools of nursing."

Scott said being the first to through ECU's Ph.D. program was a process of trial and error.

"I think being the first you're a bit of a guinea pig," Scott said. "So I had some courses that were just so outrageously difficult, and I had some that I was challenged in but appropriately challenged."

Kelly Soderlund can be contacted at ksoderlund@coxnews.com or 329-9568.