Title:Professional Development for NHS Students

After obtaining a degree from the School of Nursing & Health Studies (NHS) and watching her daughters do the same, Fran Buckley (NHS’78, Parent’08, ’12) decided to give back. “I don’t think I’d be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone to Georgetown,” Buckley says. “This was the most formative time of my life, and I want to help everybody else to have the same experiences that I had.”

From personal experience, Buckley believes strongly in exposure to diverse career paths prior to graduation. She created the Health Care Management and Policy (HCMP) Professional Development Fund to give students a leg up on their transitions into the working world.

“Evening the playing field and removing obstacles for others—that is the Georgetown way.”

“An NHS graduate can succeed in any field if given the opportunity,” says Buckley. “A Georgetown degree with a health care focus opens a lot of doors. Now we just need to show the students what those doors look like and make companies aware of these students.”

The fund aims to increase the number of job offers. To accomplish this goal, the HCMP program holds practice job interviews and networking events with alumni and prospective employers. The program also teaches skills in professional communication and negotiation.

Buckley says she hopes that this programming adds value to students’ lives and careers after Georgetown.

“We are grateful to Fran Buckley for providing our students the opportunity to complement their studies with an explicit focus on alternative careers within the fields of health care management and policy,” says Dr. Robert B. Friedland, associate professor in the Department of Health Systems Administration, who oversees the program.

Buckley’s gift covers the administration of a job posting website, strategic relationship-building with companies, and production of one-page précis summaries that intro- duce the HCMP curriculum to potential employers.

Fran Buckley (NHS’78, Parent’08, ’12), accompanied by her husband Tim, received Georgetown’s prestigious John Carroll Award in April 2018.

The HCMP program also hosts roundtable discussions with alumni leaders in health systems administration— such as Madeline Curtis (NHS’14, L’19), Danielle DeLuca (NHS’12), and Katherine Lewandowski (NHS’12)—and annual trips for students to visit poten- tial employers, including health care consulting groups like Avalere Health, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and The Lewin Group, as well as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Once students land intern- ships, the fund covers their transportation costs to and from the work site.

“It’s really important to provide opportunity to everybody in the same way regardless of socioeconomic ability,” Buckley says. “Evening the playing field and removing obstacles for others—that is the Georgetown way.”