Senior NyAsia White receives Sandra Fisher Beta Image Award
The 2016 Sandra Fisher Beta Image Award was presented to NyAsia White, a senior nursing student and member of Theta Delta Beta, Villanova University’ College of Nursing’s Undergraduate Chapter of Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Incorporated. The Award was bestowed at the 64th Northeast Regional Conference Awards Luncheon on Saturday April 30, 2016 in Richmond, Va. The Beta Image Award is given each year to one beta member from the Northeast Region for their academic excellence, creativity, leadership and service. NyAsia also was a recipient of a Henrietta Chisholm Scholarship Award.
NyAsia’s award was based on her academic achievement represented in her GPA of 3.5 on a 4.0 scale, and her induction into Alpha Nu, Villanova’s chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International. Her creativity and leadership are noted from her activities as President of Wazobia, Villanova’s African dance company and Dean of Membership with Theta Delta Beta. NyAsia received the Independence Blue Cross Foundation Grant this school year as well as the Anne V Chisum Scholarship from Theta Chapter.
Dr. Patricia Bradley, Theta Delta Beta advisor, with NyAsia White at Nursing's Convocation on May 14, 2016.
The summer following her sophomore year, NyAsia studied traditional healthcare systems in Madagascar for 7-weeks and was able to learn the importance of complementary and alternative medicine, the use of medicinal plants and traditional birth attendants. She then wrote a paper, Improving the Childbirth Experience: Complementarity, Communication and Education that was featured on the SIT Study Abroad Digital Collections website (http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2913&context=isp_collection ). During the summer of 2015, NyAsia was honored to be chosen for a Susan D. Flynn Oncology Nursing Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. At the end of the 8-week Internship program she presented an evidence-based project on The Importance of Timely End of Life Care Conversations (http://sdfondp.com/the-importance-of-timely-end-of-life-care-conversations/).
This Spring semester NyAsia was chosen as a Connelly-Delouvrier International Scholar and received funding for international nursing fieldwork in Ghana, West Africa. She and her clinical partner developed health promotion educational sessions on Cerebral Palsy (CP) to better inform the community on the causes and risk factors of CP, to increase awareness of this condition as an illness, reduce the stigma of CP and support those in the community with this illness.
NyAsia shows her commitment to service and Chi Eta Phi’s motto of Service for Humanity through her campus and community activities such as volunteering for Special Olympics and the MLK Day of Service of cleaning and sanitizing the Smith Memorial Playground & Playhouse in inner city Philadelphia. Through Campus Ministry at Villanova, she participated in a week long Service and Justice Experience in Matelot, Trinidad over this past winter semester break. During the trip she was able to immerse herself in the local culture as well as begin clearing a site for the building of a new library, cleaning the playground of a local school, volunteering at the primary school and speaking to high school children about attending college and obtaining their goals.
Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Incorporated is an international nonprofit service organization, which was chartered in 1932 at Freedmen's Hospital, now Howard University Hospital, in Washington, DC. The Northeast Region, one of five (5) Regions of Chi Eta Phi extends from Virginia to Maine and is comprised of 13 states. As of January 2016, there are 25 graduate chapters and 17 undergraduate chapters in the Northeast Region.