Fort Walton Beach Rotary Club continues its long-time support to the Northwest Florida State College Nursing program with a gift of $100,000. The Rotary club’s first gift to the college was 30 years ago and created the Kay Stokes Nursing Scholarship. Since that first gift, the club has created two additional scholarship endowments as well as the Kay Stokes Endowed Teaching Chair, providing a total of $284,095 in support. Since 1993, the three scholarships have provided more than $133,000 to support 74 students.
“By 2030, the state of Florida is projected to face a shortage of about 60,000 nurses,” said Northwest Florida State College President, Devin Stephenson at a special club meeting to celebrate the gift. “It behooves us to ramp up our nursing program. This gift is a major boost to our efforts to help meet this need.”
Half of the donation will be placed in the Kay Stokes Endowed Teaching Chair which provides program support to the program and the other half will provide scholarship support to NWF State College nursing students.