Emily R. Bear, recipient of the 2014 Penn State University Alumni Achievement Award, will be speaking at Penn State Schuylkill on March 5, 2014 at noon. This event is free and open to the public, please call (570) 385-6262 to reserve your seat(s). On April 24 and 25, 2014, she will be recognized at a ceremony at University Park, along with eight other Alumni Achievement Award recipients.
The Alumni Achievement Award is open to all graduates of the University who are thirty-five years of age or younger and have shown extraordinary professional accomplishment. These prominent young alumni are nominated by an academic college and invited by the president of the University to return to campus to share their expertise with students, faculty, staff, and administrators. They demonstrate to students that Penn State alumni succeed in an exceptional fashion at an early age. The award is a cast bronze medallion and framed certificate. This is the 10th anniversary of the Alumni Achievement Award and award recipients from the past ten years will be invited to a networking celebration at University Park when the 2014 recipients receive their awards.
Bear attended Penn State Schuylkill and graduated in 2006 from the Pottsville Hospital School of Nursing. In 2010, she received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the Penn State World Campus, and completed pre-medical requisites at Penn State Schuylkill and Berks Campuses. She is a staff nurse at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network on the Transitional Trauma Unit.
In 2012-2013, Bear took a leave of absence from her staff nurse position and spent eight weeks in Conakry, Guinea Africa volunteering as a vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistula nurse aboard the Africa Mercy Ship. She learned transcultural nursing firsthand and was able to share her experiences with her former school of nursing at an all-day seminar.
She has been a trauma nurse for over seven years and has been an active member on the unit's Performance Improvement and Practice Committee. She has recently joined the Nightshift Nurse Council representing medical-surgical nurses and has spent numerous hours as a nurse preceptor to senior nursing students and nursing graduates. In 2008, she presented at the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurse's Conference on an insulin infusion protocol.
In 2013, Bear and fellow laboratory partners were published e-Version in the International Journal of Chemistry for their research in organic chemistry. She is a member of the American Nurses Association, Society of Trauma Nurses, and Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses. She also belongs to the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and Alpha Sigma Lambda, Phi Delta Chi member. In 2004, she was the recipient of Penn State Schuylkill's first collegiate public speaking competition. She is a member of the Penn State Alumni Association.
