Supporting Adult Learners Through Nursing Scholarship

Roseann M. Sikora and her husband of 60 years, retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Timothy S. Sikora have led lives of adventure and service. They traveled and lived all around the world due to her husband's service, first as a U.S. Navy family and later in the Air Force. Both chose careers in nursing.

While her husband was stationed in San Antonio, Roseann Sikora earned her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of the Incarnate Word in 1984. Years later, their daughter Jean McLean also became a UIW alumna, earning her BBA in 2007 and her MS in Accounting in 2010.

In August 2023, Roseann Sikora and her husband pledged to establish The Roseann M. Sikora Endowed Nursing Scholarship as part of their estate. Mrs. Sikora said their intentions are to help adult learners further their nursing education with the scholarship fund.

"My husband and I are both retired nurses and we decided we'd like to help our fellow nurses," she said.

Ret. Major Sikora said, "We've been blessed through the years and our kids don't need it."

Mrs. Sikora, who grew up in Chicago, had an aunt who served in World War II as a nurse and her mother-in-law was also a nurse.

"I just thought it was something neat to do, to help people," she shared.

Mrs. Sikora said she was raised as part of a family with strong faith; attending Catholic school, which later became boarding school, and church. With that faith came a commitment to serve others.

"It was just a constant there, prayers at meals," she said. "My two grandmothers were especially strong in their faith. There was always something positive about it, whatever season we were in, Easter or Christmas."

Through many moves to new duty stations with her husband, Mrs. Sikora worked at hospitals and clinics and studied. She earned her associate's degree in 1972 through a special program for military members and their families at the University of Hawaii where she was able to take her two young daughters to classes with her. They later lived in Spain for three years where she volunteered as a nurse at a clinic.

Once in San Antonio, she worked nights at Santa Rosa Hospital and through a continuing education program she was able to earn her BS in Nursing at UIW by attending class one night a week. It was an experience Mrs. Sikora said she never forgot.

One thing she appreciated about nursing, Mrs. Sikora said, was that she could try different things and as a career it was never static. Through the years, she worked in orthopedics, the adult intensive care unit, pediatrics and later in the operating room at the VA and organ transplants.

"You could do what you had talent in," she said.

Pediatrics was her first love and while in San Antonio she worked at the children's hospital.

"The kids, they were positive," Mrs. Sikora said. "They taught you about life and being in the now."

The children always had a smile, or a kind word, a handshake or touch on the shoulder.

"As sick as they were, they always had a smile," she said. "It fed the soul as well as the body and the mind."

Mrs. Sikora said she also enjoyed a job she had with New Mexico Donor Services where she worked to secure organs for donation including hearts, livers and kidneys.

"It was definitely independent," she said. "You headed up everything, you took care of the patient. You took care of the family. You handled a lot of talking, a lot of coordinating during a critical time of death and dying. You went into surgery."

It was rewarding work, she shared. "When we were teaching. all the nurses in the transplant office I got to know, and you could see the gift of life and how it changed them and the families and those around them," Mrs. Sikora said. Ret. Major Sikora said his wife is too modest.

"She won't admit she was one of the top requesters in the United States," he said, meaning she worked with more families to secure more organ donations than other transplant coordinators.

"In one year I did over 20 requests," Mrs. Sikora said. "That meant a lot because we had over some 40 donors that year."

Some cases provided multiple organs to others and those included requests for other things such as tissue, bones, tendons and corneas.

The couple previously established at the University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH), The Sikora Pediatric Cancer and Blood Disease Outreach Fund and The Pediatric Hematology Oncology Nurses Professional Development Fund.

That outreach fund will provide specialized continuing education for nursing staff, as well as education for patients and their families, according to university communications. The other fund will support professional development for nurses caring for UNMH pediatric oncology, hematologic and hemophilia patients.

The Sikoras have demonstrated a sincere commitment to service and to caring for others throughout their lifetimes and UIW is honored to be one of the programs benefitting from their passion for humanity.