{"id":2110,"date":"2025-02-21T18:02:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T18:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2025-02-21T18:05:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T18:05:56","slug":"saluting-single-parents-from-past-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/2025\/02\/21\/saluting-single-parents-from-past-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Saluting Single Parents from Past, Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by:<\/strong> Christine Stutz, published in the Capsule, Winter 2025<\/p>\n

\n

Kimberly Barnett, BSP \u201986, has always loved learning, keeping up with technological advances, and teaching others. So it\u2019s not surprising that she excelled as a student at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy<\/strong><\/a> 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\u2019s downtown campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get to mentor and help people grow,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI preach caring,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt is imperative that you build relationships. It\u2019s part of your life, from birth to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s DNA. She is quick to acknowledge the many people who helped her fulfill her dreams.<\/p>\n

Barnett\u2019s 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 \u201calways found a way\u201d to provide for her children.<\/p>\n

Three years after her mother\u2019s passing from pancreatic cancer in 2019, Barnett established the Janice W. Barnett Memorial Scholarship for single parents enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD)<\/strong><\/a> program at the School of Pharmacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to honor her,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause it took a village to get me where I wanted to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barnett recalls her own financial stress as a young pharmacy student. \u201cIn 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen word got out at one of my jobs that I couldn\u2019t afford to purchase a class ring,\u201d she says, \u201cthe pharmacists I worked with chipped in for it. When I received my first paycheck as a licensed pharmacist, I paid them back.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that type of kindness in mind, Barnett established the scholarship in her mother\u2019s memory to pay it forward. \u201cI wanted to help single parents pursue their dreams, just like my mom and so many others did for me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompleting any type of degree can be an arduous process, especially for parents who are managing the demands of a family and school simultaneously,\u201d says Greer Griffith, MS, executive director of development at the School. \u201cThese 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have many single parents completing their PharmD who will benefit from Kim\u2019s generosity and can focus on their academic and family priorities. We are grateful to Kim for recognizing this need among our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Omolola Oloniyo, PharmD \u201924, receiving Barnett\u2019s $5,000 scholarship in her final year of pharmacy school was a godsend. \u201cAs 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,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Oloniyo, who plans to continue her studies in regulatory science and data analysis after earning her PharmD, notes that Barnett\u2019s scholarship has helped diminish the emotional stress of her burgeoning student loan debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us have student loans that will take years to pay,\u201d she says. \u201cThis scholarship relieved me of some of the financial burden that student loans have on so many individuals who want to further their education.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI preach caring,\u201d says Kimberly Barnett, BSP ’86. \u201cIt is imperative that you build relationships. It\u2019s part of your life, from birth to death.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456,1],"tags":[76,60,536],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-uncategorized","tag-pharmd","tag-preceptors","tag-scholarships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}