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April 9, 2012
 The Morningside College Department of Nursing and the Morningside Student Nurses’ Association have named Cmdr. Sherri Santos of San Antonio, Texas, the 2012 Nursing Alumna of the Year.
Santos is clinical coordinator of the Medical Education & Training Campus at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. A native of Sioux City, Iowa, Santos earned a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Morningside College in May of 1989 and was commissioned that same month as an ensign in the Navy Nurse Corps. She has served her country ever since, with deployments to Kuwait and Afghanistan in 2010.
Santos will deliver the keynote speech for the opening of the 30th annual Maud Adams Nursing Research Day on Wednesday, April 18, in the Yockey Family Community Room in the Olsen Student Center, 3609 Peters Ave., on the Morningside campus. The title of her speech is “Research on the Front Lines: Improving War Injury Outcomes.” Santos is scheduled to begin her remarks at 8:30 a.m.
During the keynote address, the Nursing Alumni Scholarship will be presented in Santos’ honor to Kay Drenkhahn of Mapleton, Iowa. Drenkhahn will graduate this spring from Maple Valley-Anthon Oto High School, and she plans to attend Morningside College in the fall. The scholarship is presented each year to a student who shows potential for outstanding professionalism in nursing.
Morningside senior nursing students will present their research projects in Lincoln Center, 3627 Peters Ave., from 10 to 11 a.m. as part of Morningside’s Palmer Student Research Symposium.
Santos spent the first part of her career working at hospitals in California and Japan. She reported to Naval Hospital Jacksonville in Florida as department head in August 2008 and was selected as Navy perioperative advisor to the surgeon general in May 2009.
She was deployed to Kuwait in January 2010 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. In April 2010, she led a team of 23 nurses, corpsmen and master-at-arms into Kandahar, Afghanistan, to support a multi-national medical unit. She returned to her duties at Naval Hospital Jacksonville in September 2010 and transferred to the Medical Education & Training Campus in September 2011.
Santos has a master’s degree in human resource management and a master’s degree in nursing. She is certified as an operating room nurse by the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses.
The nursing research day started in 1983 as a tribute to the late Maud Adams, a former chair of the Morningside nursing department. Before she came to Morningside, Adams served as a staff nurse, instructor and administrator in various public health agencies and nursing programs.
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