Shereda Bailey Scholarship awarded

Kayla Townsend

Kayla Townsend, a nursing student at Beaufort County Community College, has been chosen to receive a scholarship from an endowment that memorializes a student who died shortly before her graduation from BCCC.

Townsend, 19, of Vanceboro is a graduate of West Craven High School. She is the daughter of Charlene and Tony Townsend of Vanceboro. Townsend is a student in the Eastern North Carolina Regionally Increasing Baccalaureate Nurses Program, or ENC RIBN. She plans to continue her nursing studies after graduating from BCCC.

“I would like to thank the BCCC Foundation and the scholarship donors for this scholarship,” she said. “It will give me the opportunity to pursue my nursing degree.”

Shereda Bailey

The ENC RIBN program is a partnership between East Carolina University and several eastern North Carolina community colleges, including BCCC, through which students are enrolled in both the community college and ECU. These students complete three years of course work on the BCCC campus – including general education courses and associate degree nursing requirements – and their fourth year of study at ECU. The goal is to increase the number of baccalaureate-prepared nurses while allowing students to have access to community college tuition rates.

The Shereda Tremaine Bailey Scholarship is funded by an endowment established with contributions from her friends and family. Bailey, 21 years old when she died in 2006, was a senior in BCCC’s nursing school at the time of her death. She gained work experience while still in school through clinical rotations at Britthaven Nursing Home in Washington, the Howell Center in Greenville and Beaufort County, Washington County and Pitt Memorial hospitals.