Saluting Single Parents from Past, Present

Written by: Christine Stutz, published in the Capsule, Winter 2025

Kimberly Barnett, BSP ’86, has always loved learning, keeping up with technological advances, and teaching others. So it’s not surprising that she excelled as a student at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and continues to be a highly skilled preceptor, training manager, and coordinator for experiential learning in the pharmacy department at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s downtown campus.

“I get to mentor and help people grow,” Barnett says. Among the skills she strives to impart to her pharmacy students as a preceptor are empathy and compassion, emotional intelligence, the appreciation of diverse backgrounds, and effective communication.

“I preach caring,” she adds. “It is imperative that you build relationships. It’s part of your life, from birth to death.”

As someone who has been tutoring children since she was 14, and has cared for several seriously ill family members, helping others seems to be in Barnett’s DNA. She is quick to acknowledge the many people who helped her fulfill her dreams.

Barnett’s mother was a single parent of two, with a high school education, who worked long hours for a manufacturing company to make ends meet. While they struggled financially, Barnett says, her mom “always found a way” to provide for her children.

Three years after her mother’s passing from pancreatic cancer in 2019, Barnett established the Janice W. Barnett Memorial Scholarship for single parents enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program at the School of Pharmacy.

“I wanted to honor her,” she says, “because it took a village to get me where I wanted to go.”

Barnett recalls her own financial stress as a young pharmacy student. “In my last year of pharmacy school, the company my mother worked for shut down, and she lost her job, along with many other people. I was working five part-time jobs, in between classes and on weekends. I was broke.

“When word got out at one of my jobs that I couldn’t afford to purchase a class ring,” she says, “the pharmacists I worked with chipped in for it. When I received my first paycheck as a licensed pharmacist, I paid them back.”

With that type of kindness in mind, Barnett established the scholarship in her mother’s memory to pay it forward. “I wanted to help single parents pursue their dreams, just like my mom and so many others did for me,” she says.

“Completing any type of degree can be an arduous process, especially for parents who are managing the demands of a family and school simultaneously,” says Greer Griffith, MS, executive director of development at the School. “These additional demands on a single parent could include finding reliable and affordable child care, juggling daily living expenses, working, and striving to meet the rigorous academic requirements to complete their degree.

“We have many single parents completing their PharmD who will benefit from Kim’s generosity and can focus on their academic and family priorities. We are grateful to Kim for recognizing this need among our students.”

For Omolola Oloniyo, PharmD ’24, receiving Barnett’s $5,000 scholarship in her final year of pharmacy school was a godsend. “As a single parent, I face the challenge of having time to study, pass my courses, and still be a parent 100 percent of the time,” she says.

Oloniyo, who plans to continue her studies in regulatory science and data analysis after earning her PharmD, notes that Barnett’s scholarship has helped diminish the emotional stress of her burgeoning student loan debt.

“Many of us have student loans that will take years to pay,” she says. “This scholarship relieved me of some of the financial burden that student loans have on so many individuals who want to further their education.”