One day when Elaine Pagliaro ’79 was driving home from work, she heard a radio ad promoting Alverno’s new Weekend College. “I thought, wow, I could do this. So I went to the info session and signed up,” Pagliaro says.
At the time she heard the ad, Pagliaro was married, had a young child and was working part time as a nurse. She had a nursing diploma from Milwaukee County General Hospital’s School of Nursing but always had wanted to earn a bachelor’s degree. “Alverno made it possible for me to fulfill a dream I had since I was in grade school.”
After graduating from Alverno with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, she got her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and then became a clinical instructor of nursing at Alverno, eventually being promoted to associate professor.
“If anyone ever told me I would get in front of a class to teach, I would have said they were crazy. I was an introvert,” says Pagliaro. As a student in Weekend College’s first graduating class, Pagliaro knew students couldn’t graduate unless they could speak on their feet. Public speaking was just one of the many abilities she learned as an Alverno student.
Pagliaro is a witness to how an Alverno education changes students — from both her experience as a nursing student and as a faculty member. “I remember writing feedback and reading self-evaluations of students at the end of classes with tears in my eyes because of the difference Alverno had made in their lives,” Pagliaro says.
When she was 50, Pagliaro earned a post-master’s degree from Marquette and became a geriatric nurse practitioner, at first working for an internal medicine physician and then working with independent living patients at Luther Manor, where she retired. She also was active in many local, state and national nursing associations.
Last year, Pagliaro and her husband Frank moved from Wisconsin to Florida. With their move out of state and the nationwide nursing shortage, they decided the time was right to establish the Elaine and Frank Pagliaro Nursing Scholarship at Alverno. The annual scholarship will support up to 10 nursing students demonstrating financial need each year.
“I’ve always provided some support for Alverno, and we are blessed to live this life. Through this scholarship, we hope to help someone to achieve their degree or make it a little easier for them,” Pagliaro says. “Hopefully they will do that for someone else as well.”
