Nine moves. Five colleges. Mission accomplished.
Hannah Ellis completed her long and winding journey by graduating from the Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing online program at UTA in December 2018.
Ellis, whose husband, Mark, is captain in the United States Air Force, has lived in Washington, Idaho, California, Texas, Mississippi and Germany during their 13 years of marriage. The couple relocated again to Colorado Springs, Colorado, after she graduated.
“Colorado should be a four-year assignment. I am glad to be near mountains again because it’s more like Washington, where I am from.”
Before moving back to Texas after living in Germany for three years, Ellis enrolled in an Associate Degree in Nursing program at San Antonio College. She completed that degree the month before she started the online RN to BSN program at UTA.
“I wasn’t able to take any nursing classes in Germany, because I had already done all of the prerequisites and online courses I could,” she said. “They don’t have any nursing programs overseas where you can physically do clinicals. I had to wait. That’s why when we found out we were going to San Antonio, I applied from overseas.”
Twenty-four months later, Ellis had completed both degrees while working full time on the intensive care unit at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital. She has two children – Alexander (13) and Paige (10).
“When I first applied and enrolled at UTA, they called me at the beginning of each term to make sure I could get into whichever classes I wanted,” she said. “They always reached out and were proactive.
“I absolutely liked the flexibility. I had a routine. I was able to block schedule myself. I worked Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, then did schoolwork during the second half of the week.”
Pack, Unpack, Repeat
Hannah with her husband, Mark, and their children, Alexander and Paige
Ellis developed an early interest in healthcare while growing up in Yakima with four siblings. Her mom was an ICU nurse for 20 years before becoming a lawyer.
“She would always take me to bring-your-daughter-to-work day because nobody else wanted to do it,” she said. “I loved the hospital. I knew I wanted to be in medicine. Medical school isn’t an option because of how much we move around.”
After graduating with a general education associate degree Ellis started while attending high school, she got married and had her first child at 18 years old.
“That was a challenge with school and everything going, but I knew I wanted to be in the hospital,” she said. “That’s why I specialized in the critical care unit. I love the really sick, complicated and challenging patients.”
Ellis initially chose to become a Maverick because she wanted a degree from an accredited nursing program with a strong reputation.
“Of course, UTA is the first thing that pops up when you Google online nursing degrees,” she said. “I had a lot of friends who used different online schools I had never heard of, and I didn’t want to risk not having an accredited degree.
“Since we move around, I also need to know I can work at a Magnet hospital that requires BSN nurses, if I need to. I wanted to do whatever I could to make myself more marketable. UTA’s pricing for being a public university was also so much better than any other program I found.”
NURS 4455: Nursing Leadership & Management was Ellis’ favorite course in the curriculum.
“I ended up using that course as an excuse to follow my chief operating officer and director of nursing around at my hospital,” she said. “That was really eye-opening and interesting. I appreciated that UTA was a little more hands-off with the hours we spent with a person. They wanted us to do interviews, write papers and structure it ourselves.”
That information paid off quickly, as Ellis began teaching nurses new to the unit how to take care of kidney transplant post-op patients.
“That course helped me with knowing the structure of how hospital management works and getting myself into that position having only worked there for six months.”
Destination Unknown
Now that Ellis has a bachelor’s degree and has settled into her home in Colorado, she is set to return to work with a travel assignment at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central.
“I have all intentions of going back for a master’s degree or a Ph.D. at some point,” she said. “Mark is going to retire in five years, so I am playing it by ear. I would love to go to med school, but I don’t know how I will feel about it when I am 40.”
Ellis made the trip from San Antonio to Arlington to walk the graduation stage in the commencement ceremony.
“Finishing my bachelor’s degree was this whole production requiring a lot of time,” she said. “I was over the moon to be finished. I finished with a 4.0 GPA. I was not messing around.
“I drug my husband and kids up to Arlington. We got a hotel. I got the gown and everything. They were very excited. They knew it was very important to me that I finish it.”
Having walked a degree path littered with moving boxes, Ellis shares her keys to sticking it out.
“Your success in any program is going to be dictated by your work,” she said. “People expect a lot of convenience and expect things to come to them. You need to search it out, be proactive and put the work in. You can’t expect others to do it for you. This was something I chased for a long time. I don’t think there was anything that could have stopped me.”
Learn more about the UTA online RN to BSN program.
