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Two Pearl nursing students at ��«Ӱҵ are the recipients of nursing scholarships for this fall.

Katelyn Walter, 21, received the Carla McCulloch Scholarship and Jalen Parhm, 20, received the Kelley Elizabeth Humphreys Scholarship. Both recipients are second semester Associate Degree Nursing students on the Rankin Campus. The program is located in the Career-Technical Education Building off Greenfield Road in Pearl.

Walter decided to become a nurse after caring for her ill grandparents for several years. Her grandmother died this spring and her grandfather last year. “They have really made an impact on my decision. I want to care for others like I cared for them,” she said.

The ��«Ӱҵ program has been “a great experience. I feel like I’m learning a lot. I’m learning a lot of my clinical skills and getting a lot of experience in the hospitals,” she said.

“Although it is a large workload and a lot of hours of studying, I will say it’s all worth it. I enjoy the instructors. Overall, I feel as a second semester student I’ve learned what I need to know to go to third semester. I feel very prepared,” she said.

She will be working this summer in an externship program in the Intensive Care Unit at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Since 1991, the Carla McCulloch Scholarship has been given to a second semester Associate Degree Nursing student who embodies the traits of the young ��«Ӱҵ nursing student it memorializes.

The scholarship was created by Larry and Carol McCulloch, formerly of Magee but now residents of Roanoke, Va., in memory of their daughter Carla, a Simpson Academy graduate who was a ��«Ӱҵ nursing student at the time of her death in an April 1991 accident.

Like Walter, Parhm was influenced to enter the nursing program because of sick relatives, including grandparents. “My sister was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 11. I just want to be able to help take care of people,” he said.

The ��«Ӱҵ nursing program “has been a journey. A lot of praying, studying and a few cries every now and then. But it’s a great program with great people who teach you a lot. You learn a lot about yourself during the process,” he said.

He plans to continue his education and earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a Master of Science in Nursing with a goal of eventually teaching in a nursing program.

The Humphreys scholarship is named in honor of a ��«Ӱҵ nursing graduate, Kelley Elizabeth Humphreys, who was working in the oncology unit at St. Dominic Hospital when she was killed in a Jackson car crash in 2006.