Adetola Williams Awarded 2014 Christy Kearney Scholarship

Adetola Williams, Non-RN MSN student, is this year's Christy Kearney Scholarship winner. Adetola will receive the award at the spring 2014 Pinning Ceremony on May 19.

Adetola has an extensive history of helping out not only her community, but also communities in need in four different countries. She participated in a literacy project in TrenchTown Jamaica, and worked in permaculture gardens in Cuba. In 2001, she served as a youth representative at the world conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, and volunteered in the township of Soweto. Closer to home, she has volunteered at St. Anthony’s soup kitchen, Oakland’s annual Thanksgiving dinner, Global Exchange, the Alameda County Public Health Department in HIV Prevention, the Alameda County Food Bank, Manor Care, Point-In-Time homeless count in San Francisco, and Coach Art which provides opportunities for chronically ill children and their siblings to get involved with various forms of art.

She discovered her interest in nursing while volunteering at Highland Hospital. For over 10 years she worked with OBUGS fighting for food security in West Oakland, starting as a youth intern and working her way up as an assistant teacher, youth program supervisor, and finally as a board member until the program was adopted by Lifelong Medical in 2012. In the summer of 2013 she volunteered in the Bite to Balance program, which is a childhood obesity intervention study, where participating obese children and their families receive a weekly free bag of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables as well as bi-weekly nutrition education classes. She was able to introduce new ideas and add new pieces to the program, such as cooking classes. They just submitted their study manuscript to the Journal of Community Health and she hopes to be published soon.

Christy Kearney Scholarship was created to both honor and recognize Christy Kearney’s many years as a devoted teacher of Nursing at SF State, her commitment to her students, her extraordinarily compassionate care of the many patients she saw over a lifetime of work as a nurse, and her constant devotion to her family. It is the intention of Christy Kearney’s family that funds be awarded to a student who is engaged in nursing community service, particularly with the underserved and have a commitment to holistic health that can best be demonstrated through coursework and/or nursing practice.

Please join us in congratulating Adetola Williams!