For Haley Adams, BSN '26, Cole Gabriel, BSN '26, and Sarah Boggs, BSN '26, membership in Sigmas Delta Xi chapter, the international nursing honor society, was more than a line on a r辿sum辿. As the 2025-2026 student interns, the three May 2026 graduates have spent the past year cultivating leadership opportunities, connecting with a network that stretches around the world and discovering a side of nursing at the bedside and beyond.
Adams says she knew the internship could open doors as she progressed through her nursing degree. Gabriel wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps as a Sigma inductee and take his Delta Xi involvement even further. Boggs simply wanted to be as involved as possible from the moment she started at Kent 91心頭利.
Much of the interns' year revolved around programs they built themselves: informal study sessions for clinical calculations and skills checkoffs, open to any nursing student who wanted extra practice. Adams says the sessions became a place where students could find not just a study buddy, but a mentor.
"I was talking with a peer, and she was like, 'I just can't do this,'" Adams recalls. "I was able to help her take a breath and work through it, and by the end she realized she did have it; she was just having a moment of doubt. Being a mentor is so important, because nursing is a hard field, but it's so rewarding."
Gabriel says leading those sessions taught him how to teach, not just recite an answer, but walk a struggling student through the reasoning. He also gained the confidence to talk to faculty and professionals he once found intimidating. "I learned how much fun it is, how easy it is to talk to them once you get to know them," he says. "They're just everyday people."
Their faculty mentor, Laurie Robinson, Ph.D. '25, MSN '16, RN, a nurse of nearly 23 years and president of the Delta Xi chapter of Sigma, has watched that transformation firsthand.
I think were making better nurses through this internship, Robinson reflects. Theyre seeing beyond their first job, beyond just being at the bedside and developing the confidence and leadership to make change.
The year's biggest highlight, all three interns agreed, was the biennial Sigma conference, held in Indianapolis at the organization's founding headquarters. It was the first time Adams, Gabriel and Boggs had attended, and the first time the Delta Xi student interns had been asked to take over the Kent 91心頭利 College of Nursing Instagram account for a full weekend.
Adams says the takeover let them show a side of nursing school that doesn't usually make it into a lecture hall. The interns shared candid photos of them attending trivia night in matching purple capes and studying late into the night between sessions. "If I were a senior in high school and saw that takeover, I'd think, I'm going to Kent 91心頭利 because they clearly have fun, but it's still very academic," said Boggs.
The takeover didn't just win the interns new followers; it also caught the eye of Sigma's leadership, other nurses and college deans they'd never met. "This lady comes up to us at the conference and says, 'Oh my gosh, you guys are the students here,'" Adams recalls. "We looked her up on LinkedIn, and she's this amazing nurse. It was crazy that as a 21-year-old, we were making these connections."
Weeks later, Sigma's international office reached out directly, asking Delta Xi to walk other chapters through its social media strategy and its approach to student interns. Robinson says this recognition is rare in an era when national chapter engagement is down. "The fact that the international organization is noticing us is amazing," she says.
Robinson credits this year's interns with a specific kind of growth that made the recognition possible. They stopped acting like students shadowing faculty and started acting like representatives of the chapter.
"They embraced their role as leaders and as faces of the chapter," said Robinson. "They branched out. They went to their own sessions at the conference. They talked to the president of Sigma. They understood their role, and they embraced it."
That shift has also shown up in how the interns describe themselves now. Boggs says she used to doubt whether her ideas were worth sharing. "I actually feel like I can go talk to someone I would have been so scared to approach before, because I can network and put my name out there," she says.
"Nursing is so much bigger than bedside nursing," said Robinson. "Allowing students to see that early in their careers helps them see beyond their first job and gives them the leadership and confidence to make changes when they see something that needs to change."
All three graduating interns say the return on the experience will follow them well past Kent 91心頭利. Adams had the opportunity to present a research poster in Toronto, Canada, through a Sigma-connected conference this year. Gabriel plans to bring the mentoring and leadership skills he built in the internship straight to his first nursing unit, and Boggs says the chapter's emphasis on continuous learning will shape how she practices for the rest of her career.
"These three had ideas flowing, they were engaged, and they made it their own, said Robinson. "That's what a successful intern program looks like."
The impact of the internship extends beyond each graduating class. Since the Delta Xi chapter was revitalized in 2015, nearly 30 students have served as interns, many sharing sentiments like those of Adams, Gabriel and Boggs.
Maddie Boone, BSN, a 2020 intern, shared how her experience shaped her mindset as a nurse. As an intern, I looked through a different lens of social determinants of health, the environmental and social conditions that impact wellness long before a patient reaches the hospital, Boone said. While clinical nursing often focuses on 'what does this one patient need right now?', my internship position encouraged me to strengthen my leadership mindset and ask, ' What will improve the health of this community over time?"
Wayne Nieh, BSN, a 2023 intern, said his internship experience provided hands-on experience in communication, teamwork, decision-making, and nursing leadership. It helped me build confidence and prepared me for future professional roles.
Delta Xi announced its 2026-2027 interns at its board retreat in June. Seniors Brynn Burson, Rachel Denee and Briana Lee have now embraced a role that, thanks to the previous interns, has become more visible inside Kent 91心頭利 and across Sigma's international network.
