For This Future Nurse, Community Service and Care Are Everything
Taylor Wise ’25 built a résumé rooted in civic and community engagement and is ready to leverage those hands-on experiences to make an impact in the nursing profession.
- School of Nursing
There’s no question that nursing is a demanding profession. Despite the challenging hours and steep volume of patients, nurses share a common calling to serve through healing patients and caring for communities.
Taylor Wise ’25 is no exception. In her time at Widener, the nursing major has built an impressive résumé rooted in civic and community engagement.
Her latest achievement was being named the first ever nursing student representative for Widener’s Community Nursing Clinic. In this role, Taylor helped to relocate to the pro bono nursing clinic to the university’s on-campus clinic and boost student involvement.
Taylor’s diverse clinical and community involvement experiences, which include a nurse externship at Jefferson Health, positioned her to thrive in this clinic role while delivering hands-on accessible healthcare to the surrounding Chester community.
It's a really unique experience that a lot of schools don't have to offer. It’s awesome that it also involves our community that we are based within so it's like real life scenarios where we are able to relate to it cause it's around us.” —Taylor Wise '25
Finding ways to engage through community service is at the root Taylor’s involvement as a nursing undergraduate. In her junior year she was named the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium Fellow in the prestigious AmeriCorps program.
The national fellowship enables Taylor to utilize her nursing background to address unmet public health needs through community service. The fellowship also connects Taylor to nursing student fellows across the country so she can grow her professional and peer network.
In her senior year, and second year in the fellowship, Taylor fulfills her AmeriCorps requirements by supporting Widener’s Community Nursing Clinic’s move to campus.
“I am able to collect all of my hours through serving at the clinic every week and then I'm able to go and network with other nursing students,” Taylor said, adding that the fellows also participate in community service outreach initiatives in Chester and Philadelphia.
Nursing joined the roster of student-led healthcare services offered in collection of clinics in Wollman Hall in September 2023 after moving from its longtime residence at CityTeam in Chester.
Syncing her fellowship and community clinic work together made Taylor integral to establishing nursing’s footprint in the clinic and continuing its tradition of caring for uninsured and underinsured patients. From day one Taylor was on-site greeting patients, answering questions, scheduling appointments, and managing student volunteers.
To drive student involvement Taylor established an e-board to build a pipeline of student and faculty volunteers to ensure continuous patient care.
“Nursing students can come in and volunteer and shadow the nurses to observe hands-on clinical skills, communication, and other real-life skills,” said Taylor.
According to Taylor, the e-board introduces first- and second-year nursing students to community health in an interdisciplinary clinical setting early on in their academic careers.
“They wouldn’t really would see this in clinical until senior year population health because this is more so a population community nursing-based kind of experience which is really unique.”
Like many Widener students, Taylor taps into different academic and social outlets across campus that contribute to a well-rounded student experience.
When she’s not supporting the Office of Student Engagement’s marketing efforts as the social media manager, Taylor partners with faculty across disciplines to lead and present research. Most recently, she presented findings focused on the nursing clinic and its impact on student learning and community health.
These campus-wide affiliations, both in and out of nursing, have allowed Taylor to create a network that will support her at Widener and beyond.
I have built amazing relationships with the faculty at Widener that have allowed me to grow into the professional I am becoming today." —Taylor Wise '25
