The gift of a scholarship has propelled Elizabeth Santic into a cardiovascular operating room at Hartford Hospital, where as a nurse she monitors patients suffering from aneurysms, heart conditions and assists surgeons with cardiopulmonary bypass machines and open-heart surgeries.
“It’d be harder to finish college if I didn’t have that scholarship, said Santic, a 2020 graduate of the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. “That definitely was a big burden off of my shoulders to not have to worry about struggling to make ends meet, pay for college, pay for whatever else that I needed to do.