Three College of Nursing faculty members have established endowed scholarships, deepening their legacies to UCF: Drs. Diane Wink, Jean Kijek and Linda Hennig.

Together with her husband, Dr. Wink established the Diane and Lawrence Wink Endowed Nursing Scholarship for undergraduate nursing students. Dr. Wink remembers the excitement of being a nursing student—and is glad to see it continue at UCF and in her work as a nursing practitioner.

“Nursing is a field where you can, during your career, do a wide variety of different things and still be doing the core mission of the profession, which is helping people maintain and improve their health,” Wink said.

Dr. Kijek attended nursing school at New York University (NYU) at the same time Wink and Hennig did, but had a special friendship with Hennig—they were roommates.Sharing an interest in acute trauma, Wink and Hennig met in NYU’s rehabilitation nursing program. Kijek feels strongly about engaging with the political aspects of nursing as well.

The Dr. Jean C. Kijek Doctoral Student Endowed Scholarship is for students who are enrolled in nursing’s Ph.D. program at UCF. “I always wanted to be a teacher, so I’m in education,” she said. “But my mother was once a patient when I was inhigh school, and I saw some things that made me want to go into nursing.”

Dr. Hennig chose to focus on rehabilitation because she was drawn to the long-term patient-doctor relationships the fieldoffered—but technology excited her, as well. In 1998, she helped develop a web-based program for nurses at Brigham Young University.

The Drs. Linda M. and E. Glenn Hennig, Jr. Endowed Scholarship will be awarded to students in the nurse educator program—and it’s also in honor of her late husband, Dr. E. Glenn Hennig, Jr., a neuropsychologist who supported nursing education. “It’s in his memory and is a part of my legacy that I wanted to have as an ongoing endowment,” she said. “Of all the things I’ve done in nursing, I think nursing education is where I’ve found my fit.”