Donors

This scholarship is named for Patricia A. Sommer, Tennessee Tech's first Dean of the School of Nursing. Dean Sommer was a native of Miami, FL. She graduated with a degree in nursing and, after working for a few years in nursing, entered the missionary field and was sent to an orphanage in Colombia, South America. She stayed for ten years, managing the facility and caring for the children. When the orphanage closed, she brought back to the US the very young children not yet school age, and those children who had finished 8th grade. There was a school nearby which took the other children. She raised some of the children to adulthood wile some were adopted. She returned to the U.S. to the Fort Worth area of Texas. She worked and completed her BSN and MSN degrees at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Nursing. Then she became a faculty member at that institution while working on her Ph.D. in nursing there. She completed her doctorate in 1979 and was hired as Dean of the TTU School of Nursing in April 1980.