By Julie Harper ’01
Tomorrow UCF will award 338 nursing degrees to directly impact the health of communities in Central Florida and beyond.
On Saturday’s Summer 2025 commencement ceremony, UCF will award 338 nursing degrees, from the bachelor’s to the doctorate, in addition to graduate certificates.
The graduates will join a community of more than 17,000 Knight nurse alumni, most of which — 85% — live and work in Florida.
Graduation celebrations began yesterday with a recognition ceremony at the College of Nursing to recognize student achievements.
Answering the Call
The Summer 2025 cohort includes newly licensed nurses graduating from UCF’s Traditional BSN and Accelerated Second Degree BSN programs.
Among the graduates is Stephanie Defreitas, a 2024 Orlando Health Scholar and 2024 Helene Fuld Health Trust Scholar.
“The accelerated option was important to me, to have a BSN in a shorter amount of time since I already had my bachelor’s degree,” she says. “I have had all the tools and support I needed to graduate ready for clinical practice.”
The cohort includes many academically talented and high-achieving students with 37 students who earned University Academic Honors with a GPA of 3.8 of higher.
Five nursing students will also graduate from UCF’s Burnett Honors College, with four students completing an Honors Undergraduate Thesis.
In addition, three outstanding students were recognized with awards from UCF’s Pegasus Partners:
- Laura Velez, Orlando Health Student Excellence Award
- Sofiana Khy, AdventHealth Mission of Excellence Award
- Molly Almes, Nemours Children’s Health UCF Student Nurse Award
Advancing the Profession
At the graduate level, UCF is fueling a pipeline of much needed nurse leaders, nursing faculty and nurse scientists.
With her second doctoral degree from UCF, Eunice Oladepe Ojo ’21DNP is helping to solve two healthcare challenges — the nursing faculty shortage and falls among older adults.
A graduate of UCF’s online Nursing Ph.D. program, Ojo will help fill a vital role in the future of the profession as a faculty member and already has two job offers in progress.
Her research focus is on fall prevention among older adults, addressing the leading cause of injuries among that growing population.
“I always aspired to achieve the highest educational degree to engage in inquiry, discovery and development of innovation to make the world a better place,” Ojo says.
Other UCF College of Nursing doctoral students are also making valuable contributions to nursing science with independent research and scholarly projects that improve patient care.
View all doctoral candidates and their scholarly projects and dissertations here.
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