Alumni help build a new home for Carolina Nursing

For Renée Bridges, the study room was a sanctuary. 

On the 3^rd floor of the newer wing of Carrington Hall at the UNC School of Nursing in 2011, Bridges began work on her master’s degree in health care leadership and administration. She’d earned her BSN from Carolina years earlier, and she valued her life as a heart and vascular nurse at UNC Rex. She’d come back to Carolina because she knew she was ready to take on more. 

The room was comfortable, with a table and white board, good lighting, and enough room for her books and computer. It was a quiet space that allowed her to focus for hours at a time when she came to campus, and she returned to it over and over. She eventually noticed the room had a plaque with a name: Susan O’Dell. 

“I remember thinking, ‘I know her!’” Bridges, BSN ’01, MSN ’14, DNP ’20, said. “So many times, you might register a name on a door, but you don’t have a connection to that person.”

Susan O’Dell was Director of Women’s, Children’s, and Specialty Services at UNC Rex. They were on the same nursing leadership team for years, but Bridges never mentioned that she was working on her master’s degree – and later her doctorate – in a room that bore her colleague’s name.

“Susan is a great leader, and I was studying for my master’s in nursing administration, and later my doctorate in nursing practice with a focus in administration, and I thought, maybe it’s going to sink in being in this space,” said Bridges. “Somehow it might influence me to be that great leader as well.”

It’s something she never forgot.

When Bridges thought of a meaningful way to support the school, her mind turned to what that study room meant to her. With the construction of the new Nursing Education Building, Bridges decided to offer students that same kind of gift – a space where an aspiring nurse could focus on an education, collaborate across disciplines and chart a new path. In the new building, a conference room will bear her and her husband’s names, with a window to let in the light and face the rooftop garden.

“I want to pay it forward. Not everyone has a great dorm or apartment situation,” she said. “In my doctoral program, I was taking a class at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, and we would reserve that same space for my group. Having that place in the nursing school to bring my classmates was important, and I feel like it helped us promote that interprofessional education that is such a big focus now.” 

“I was left without words when I found out about this,” O’Dell, BSN ’77, MSN ’95, said. “She’d never told me. I’m glad the room served that need. The whole reason for the naming of it was perhaps to light that spark, that someone might say, maybe I’ll do something like this sometime.”

The upcoming Nursing Education Building, on which the school will break ground on October 25, is the long-awaited new 110,000 square-foot facility that will replace the outdated 1969 wing of Carrington Hall, half of the school’s current home. The building will increase the school’s overall space by 20,000 square feet and provide a modern structure complete with the latest technologies to better prepare students for the modern health care environment and to allow for current and future program expansion and more innovative learning opportunities.

When alumni donate to name a room, they have a direct role in helping the school grow and meeting student needs, as the state only provides part of the funding for expansion, O’Dell said. Naming rooms helps the school address the critical nursing shortage and provide state-of-the-art opportunities students and faculty need to lead advancements in health care. O’Dell dedicated the room in Carrington in 2007, and she and her husband have decided to also name a conference room in the Dean’s Suite of the new building. 

“The building is crucial to being able to generate nurses who are well-educated, able to solve problems, and really to be able to recruit the best of the best. The facility matters, for the future faculty and staff, and for interprofessional education.” —Susan O’Dell

O’Dell’s love for the school and her nursing career run deep. After retiring from UNC Rex in 2018, she worked as the executive director of the North Carolina Organization of Nursing Leaders and returned to patient care during the pandemic. She now works part-time at a Raleigh pharmacy administering vaccinations. She has served on Carolina Nursing’s former foundation board and has continued to give back to the school with her time, heart and generosity for decades. 

“I am very grateful for my education that I got at Carolina and for my career as a nurse,” she said. “It’s given me so much, and as I went into administration, I loved helping newer nurses get started in their careers. It’s been extremely rewarding for me. The reason I chose to go into health care was to help others. Being part of this is so important.” 

Bridges’ gratitude for the school similarly kept her coming back, not only for further degrees, but also for homecoming, mentorship events and induction into the school’s chapter of Sigma Theta Tau, the nursing honor society.

“I’m so thankful to be a nurse,” said Bridges. “These past several years have been very challenging for all of us with the pandemic, but there are so many ways we can help our community and impact our community, and so having been to Carolina three times now, I am so thankful for the education I received.”

Bridges and O’Dell both recognized the incredible changes to nursing and nursing education in the years since they attended the school and became devoted alumni. Leaving a legacy of support by including their names in the new building creates opportunities for the nurses of tomorrow – whether they work at the bedside, research or administration, or all of the above – and the changes the field can both see coming and can’t yet imagine. 

“This is where I found my love for the heart,” Bridges said. “You find that niche, something you’re passionate about, and you can’t not do it. I want other people to have that same love and that same experience.”

To join Bridges and O’Dell in this investment in the future of Carolina Nursing, contact Kelly Kirby at kelly_kirby@unc.edu. To learn more about the building, visit the campaign site. 

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