BYU College of Nursing Professor Sondra Heaston was recently awarded the BYU Muriel Thole Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellowship.
This accolade is awarded yearly during BYU’s University Conference to a faculty member who has demonstrated exceptional effort in their mentorship. It provides them with more funding for teaching projects such as experiential learning endeavors.
Before coming to BYU as a faculty member, Professor Heaston had no intention of teaching. She found joy working as an ER nurse in her early career and didn’t consider pivoting until a prompting came.
“I thought I was done with school,” she remarked. “Then, all of a sudden, I started getting ‘the twinges.’”
Those “twinges” told her it was time to leave her comfort zone and go back to school to move on to the next phase. She recalls seeing ads for teachers and thinking to herself, “I think I might want to do that.”
Staying true to the prompting she received, she enrolled in the BYU Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) graduate program. She was interviewed for a teaching role in the college during her final semester and began working just a few weeks after graduation!
Since beginning her time as a faculty member at the College of Nursing, it has become clear that Professor Heaston has a knack for mentoring students. She has led students on research teams, Global & Population Health Nursing Clinical Practicums, presentations, and a host of other settings.
She says that seeing students’ excitement towards being a nurse and learning what that entails helps motivate her to be a better teacher. As she put it, she hopes to pay her love for nursing forward via her mentorship, inspiring students to “catch the vision” of nursing and be able to love the profession to the same degree that she has.
One of Professor Heaston’s most recent endeavors has been her ongoing work in Paraguay to promote, among other things, first-aid practices and reproductive health education to young adults using UNESCO guidelines.
Many students have accompanied her to Paraguay, as well as to myriad other countries where they’ve presented their work to diverse audiences. Several students shared what makes working with Professor Heaston special:
Fifth-semester student Carter Bird, who accompanied Professor Heaston to Paraguay and then to Australia where they presented their research,
He was impressed that, despite their hurried pace, she often paused to get to know the people they encountered.
“[She] does a really, really good job of stopping and just talking with [everyone],” Carter said. “I don’t have to spend 45 minutes with each patient I have, but [I can] let them know that I care about them and am interested in what they have to say.”
Another fifth-semester student, Alex Hill, noted that Professor Heaston is an “adaptive leader.” He commented that some leaders only have one mode—either too controlling or too relaxed. By contrast, she always knew when to step back and let the students learn by experience but was always there as a resource when they needed assistance.
Lastly, Morgan Hoyt (semester four) shared how Professor Heaston stayed positive even amidst the difficulties and long days their work entailed.
“Some…days were really hard on a lot of us as the students, and so I can imagine that for her it was also very hard, but you could not tell,” she said. “She was very pleasant and so upbeat…if Sondra can do it, we can do it.”
This award will provide her with more funding for her research, as well as an added sense of determination to be the best mentor possible for the budding nurses she leads into the future.