Correspondent photo / Sean Barron ... Nancy Wagner, who retired last month from running Youngstown State University’s Centofanti School of Nursing, dons the award medallion she won for her leadership in the program.

LIBERTY — At least since her teen years, Nancy Wagner has had her finger squarely on the pulse of what she intended to do with her life — and why she intended to do it.

“I’ve always tried to see the positives in what I can do to help them,” Wagner, 68, who grew up on Youngstown’s North Side, said.

She was referring to having worked as a nursing specialist for children with cystic fibrosis at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

That work also encapsulates an important part of Wagner’s longtime desire to enter the nursing field, something upon which she had set her sights dating to her days as a student at Villa Maria (Pa.) High School, where she graduated in 1973.

After taking home her high school diploma, Wagner wasted no time enrolling at the University of Cincinnati, the launching pad for her long nursing career, and from which she earned a bachelor’s degree in the field.

That paved the way for a 12-year career at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, which included as a pediatric nurse and about 18 months as a staff nurse. Despite the many accomplishments in the early phases of her career, Wagner was quick to spread out the credit where she feels it needs to go.

“I had a great team that I worked with,” Wagner said. She earned her doctorate degree from Case Western Reserve University’s Bolton School of Nursing in Cleveland.

In 1989, Wagner returned to the Mahoning Valley, where her husband, Barry, worked for her parents at their medical uniform business on Belmont Avenue. Around that time, she began working in St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

ADDING ACADEMIA

By 1991, Wagner added the academia aspect to her nursing career via being hired part-time at Youngstown State University, where she spent about 4 1/2 years as a nursing instructor.

In 1995, the university gave her a full-time faculty position that she kept until retiring June 30 as director of YSU’s Centofanti School of Nursing, which she began in 2013 as department chairwoman. Wagner ran for the position, and again in 2018, through a process in which faculty voted for her.

“That five years just ended, so I decided it was a good time to retire,” she said.

During her 10 years at the helm of YSU’s nursing school, she oversaw the development in 2021 of a doctorate in nursing practice program for anesthesia students, in partnership with St. E’s School of Nursing. The following year, she was instrumental in reopening an associate’s degree program for nursing students that had been closed since the 1980s.

“We’re taking in a second cohort of students this fall,” said Wagner, adding that each fall, 110 students are admitted to the bachelor’s degree program.

Also under her leadership, the Centofanti School of Nursing launched the annual White Coat Ceremony eight years ago for entry-level sophomores who wish to become nurses. Faculty place the coats on the students as part of a ceremony, as well as a humanism pin, denoting they will be caring, compassionate nurses — all of which takes place shortly before they begin their clinicals, she explained.

In addition, the nursing school earned full accreditation from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, established the Masternick Nursing Simulation Lab and created an online RN-BSN completion program, which received $382,000 in grants to expand it and an MSN education program.

In early 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centofanti School of Nursing partnered with the Youngstown City Health Department to vaccinate nearly 5,000 YSU students and faculty as well as their family members at a clinic established in Beeghly Center with about 20 stations.

At the time, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines were just becoming available. Rollouts often were uneven, and many people went through the painstaking and tedious online process of trying to set up appointments to be inoculated.

“We opened in Beeghly Center and had a great system and little waiting. It was a great experience for our students,” and helped with their communication skills, she remembered.

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

For her work and contributions to the university, Wagner was the inaugural James P. Tressel Endowed Chair in Leadership award recipient. The endowment was set up in 2021 via a $1.6 million gift from the YSU Foundation.

Others she has received are the Watson Award for Excellence in Academic Leadership, YSU’s Distinguished Professor Award and an Award for Excellence from CWRU’s Bolton School of Nursing.

Wagner listed her longevity in, and deep passion for, the nursing field as one of her top proudest career moments. Another is the pride she carries for her students, who were “taught to be wonderful, caring nurses,” as well as the program’s full accreditation status.

Even though she retired late last month, Wagner intends to be anything but inactive or sedentary. She plans to continue as board chairwoman with the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation’s human services committee and stay active on behalf of the Hadassah Medical Center and its nursing school in Israel, along with the American Nurses Association’s Ohio chapter and other nursing organizations.

Recently, she was part of a team that hosted four Israeli nurses on a multi-city tour of hospitals in the U.S. Wagner and the others showed them MetroHealth Hospital and other facilities in Cleveland, she said.

Wagner also hopes to secure grants to help underserved students receive stipends and other means to be successful, she said.

In the meantime, Wagner hopes to find a little rest and relaxation time this summer before embarking with her husband and several friends on a European riverboat cruise this fall on the Danube River. The 10-day trip will take them to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Wagner and her husband have two sons, Brad and Kenny, and an 11-month-old granddaughter, Maddie.