Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
This program speaks to the heart of our mission. By working directly with patients and populations all over the world, Soto Scholars will gain experiences, skills and values they will carry with them for the rest of their careers.
By Micah Mertes
A transformative gift will take Creighton nursing students to work for and with communities at several partner sites across the world.
The gift — made by alumna Kathy Keough Soto, BSN’75, her family, and the Donald and Marilyn Keough Foundation — will create the Soto Nursing Scholars program within Creighton’s College of Nursing and the Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships Program.
“I know from my experiences as a Creighton nurse that the College of Nursing offers students something more than other schools," said Kathy Keough Soto. "Creighton teaches nurses how to be empathetic and really get to know their patients so they can provide the best care for them. This scholarship will do that for more Creighton students, and our family is very proud to help make it possible. The world needs more Creighton nurses.”
Over seven years, multiple cohorts of five licensed Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates (25 total) will receive a full scholarship to earn a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree and certificate in global health at Creighton. During the three-year program, Soto Scholars will develop their skills in healthcare-deprived communities internationally. The gift will also fund travel, programming and faculty support for the Soto Scholars program.
Inspired by Ignatian values, the program will empower nursing students to work toward greater health equity, build lasting relationships with community partners and practice the values of cura personalis on a global scale.
“This gift, for which we are so grateful, makes it possible for students to explore and invest in health equity and global access to care,” said Jessica Clark, DNP, RN, Dean of the College of Nursing. “This program speaks to the heart of our mission. By working directly with patients and populations all over the world, Soto Scholars will gain experiences, skills and values they will carry with them for the rest of their careers, caring for the whole person wherever they practice.”
The Soto Nursing Scholars program is modeled after and will join Creighton's Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships program. Established in 2021 with a $25 million gift from an anonymous foundation, the Arrupe Scholars program immerses Creighton School of Medicine students in global communities to work alongside local healthcare providers and organizations at partner sites in the Dominican Republic, Rwanda, Ecuador and Nepal.
In the Arrupe program — named for social justice champion Pedro Arrupe, SJ — medical students engage in a five-year program that includes multiple immersions at their chosen partner sites and an innovative curriculum rooted in health equity and decolonizing global health. Between their M2 and M3 years, Arrupe Scholars complete a year of coursework to earn their Master of Public Health degree.
“The Soto Nursing Scholars program will build on and expand the Arrupe program while also tailoring curriculum and immersion experiences to nursing students — graduate nursing students in particular,” said Jason Beste, BS’03, MD’08, executive director of the Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships program. “We will also be exploring innovative ways for the Soto and Arrupe scholars to learn and work interprofessionally with one another, in the classroom and in the field alongside our international partners. If we want to work toward eradicating health injustice, this level of collaborative care is essential.”
“Individuals are complicated,” Clark said. “They’re multifaceted. It takes the whole team to make sure everyone is getting the care they need.”
Soto Scholars will join Arrupe Scholars at established partner sites and form new partnerships specific to the nursing program. Students from both schools will also participate in the joint program’s formation curriculum, which Beste has continued to develop over the past few years.
“Whether you’re becoming a nurse, physician or another health profession, formation is universal,” Beste said. “Arrupe and Soto scholars will learn cultural humility, how to work in cultures different from their own, which often have fewer resources, how to build trusting power-balanced and equitable partnerships and how to use an accompaniment model to work with compassion for all people. These skills transcend all specialties and borders, and they will benefit everyone the Arrupe and Soto scholars go on to care for.”
It is humbling, said Dean Clark, “to see through someone else’s eyes and to experience different populations, different climates, different regions of the world. It gives you a greater appreciation for what we have at our fingertips that others don’t.”
Soto Scholars will enter the program with a BSN and a year or more of work experience. They can choose from multiple graduate-level tracks, including pediatric, neonatal, family, psychiatric mental health, adult gerontology, education and leadership.
“No graduate nursing program in the nation, at least that I’m aware of, is offering all of these graduate nursing tracks the opportunity to participate in global experiences such as this,” said Soto Nursing Scholars director Shelly Luger, DNP, RN, a longtime College of Nursing associate professor focused on leadership, rural nursing and service learning.
Soto Scholars will work on scholarly projects at the partner sites, collecting data, identifying opportunities to enhance health outcomes, and developing and implementing interventions based on those findings.
Like every aspect of the Arrupe and Soto Scholars, Luger said, the project experiences will be highly collaborative.
“We can’t go to these places and say: ‘You have to do this’ or We’re going to fix this.’ It can only be a partnership. That’s fundamental to the whole program. We don’t have all the answers. We want to walk and work alongside our partners before we even begin to understand how we might help them.”
And what a life-changing opportunity for a student to have, Luger said.
“Long after they have completed their program, Soto and Arrupe Scholars are going to know how to make a greater impact and perhaps even influence the future of healthcare in general.”
Clark: “It’s a process of formation that nursing and medical students won’t find anywhere else.”
Beste: “The reach these students are going to have will be tremendous. To the donors who are funding Arrupe and Soto, you are doing more than creating a program at Creighton. You are starting a movement.”
That movement begins with students like Isra Eldosougi, a Class of 2028 medical student and Arrupe Scholar in Phoenix.
Eldosougi is a New Jersey native who, after high school, moved to Sudan, where she volunteered at a center for women and children with disabilities. Back in the U.S., she earned her Bachelor of Science in evolutionary biology at Columbia University and researched the social determinants of health to help hospitals and health systems support vulnerable populations.
When Eldosougi was looking for a medical school, Creighton (and Arrupe) seemed like a perfect fit. For her Arrupe immersion, she chose the University of Global Health Equity in Butaro, Rwanda, as her partner site. She will return there every summer through her remaining three years in the program.
“It’s honestly one of the most beautiful things that’s happened in my life so far,” she said. “The program is an opportunity to grow as a person and as a healthcare professional, and having that opportunity is truly a blessing.
“It has been such a wonderful home for me. I know that others will feel the same way.”
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Watch a video about the Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships program.
