This summer, Brittany Freeman is studying with nurse researchers at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, thanks to a National Institutes of Health grant.

Freeman, 26, is one of five Georgia Perimeter College nursing students participating in the National Institutes of Health Bridges to Baccalaureate internship program at Emory. The eight-week immersion program focuses on rigorous nursing education coupled with academic research exposure. Other GPC nursing students selected for the program are Roxana Chicas, Johnny Hardeman, Udia Oghenetega Otuguor and Alexa Stewart.

“For the first two weeks, we’ve been learning research terminology, how to analyze data and how to read and break down research articles. After that, we’ll be paired with researchers and will be following them and helping them with the research,” says Freeman.

Emory and Georgia Perimeter are the only institutions in Georgia to be selected by the NIH. The new partnership will provide $900,000 over five years to develop programming to increase the pool of underrepresented students prepared for careers in research. 

Students also will receive academic advising about pursuing doctoral studies in nursing and will be exposed to groundbreaking research at Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

Freeman is entering her second year as a nursing student at GPC and is interested in becoming a nurse midwife. The Bridges to Baccalaureate program has opened her eyes to the possibility of using her nursing research experience to improve outcomes in adolescent pregnancies in minority women, she says.

“I am interested in not only providing a higher quality of care for these young women and preparing them for motherhood, but also preventing future unwanted pregnancies and changing outcomes for these women,” Freeman says. “In order to do this, I have to research and get information on that population.”

She is excited about the opportunities afforded by the grant. “I wanted to go to Emory for my nursing degree, but it was too expensive, so I decided to go with GPC’s nursing program,” she says.

Upon graduation from Georgia Perimeter in May, Freeman will be able to pursue the rest of her nursing education at Emory. The Bridges to Baccalaureate program helps provide its students a seamless transition between GPC and Emory and is geared to producing more doctoral students who are prepared as nurse scientist/researchers. Freeman hopes to eventually get her master’s degree to become a nurse practitioner and, eventually, her doctorate in nursing. All are possible through the NIH program.

“The more we all learn, the more we get excited,” she says. “We have learned a lot in just two weeks,” she says.

“We want to develop among GPC associate degree students enrolled in the Bridges to Baccalaureate program a familiarity with the research process and a motivation to pursue further studies leading to a doctoral degree in nursing,” says Dr. Jackie Williams, GPC associate chair of nursing and the project director for the grant.  

With this program, both institutions plan to establish a partnership model for two-year and four-year nursing schools in Georgia to build pipelines for baccalaureate education for nursing students.