From RN to Ph.D.: How Claflin Built the Only HBCU Nursing Pipeline in South Carolina

*Claflin Nursing Department’ s inaugural graduates who earned Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degrees from Clemson University’s School of Nursing through the Claflin-to Clemson Big Cat Fellowship Program.

From left to right: Dr. Lucretia Wilson, Adjunct Professor, Claflin Nursing Department; Dr. Michelle Mayo, Claflin Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs; Dr. Verlie Tisdale, Vice Provost of Academic Programs; Dr. Tara Simmons; Dr. Shantanique Franklin-Givens; Dr. Patrice Burgess; Dr. Deonte Thompson; Dr. Alecia Moody; Dr. Adrain Sims; Dr. Chevron Vice; Dr. Shannon Smith, Former Chair, Claflin Nursing Department; Dr. Pandora Ryant, Faculty, Claflin Nursing Department; and Mrs. Kartina Harrison, Faculty, Claflin Nursing Department.

Seven Claflin Nursing Graduates Earn Doctoral Degrees Through
Claflin-to Clemson Big Cat Fellowship Program

The grocery store wasn't exactly where Dr. Verlie Tisdale expected to recruit nursing students. Neither was the church pew. But when you are trying to launch what would become the only nursing program at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) in South Carolina offering both bachelor's and master's degrees — in a region stretching 72 miles between Orangeburg and Charleston with no comparable program in sight — you recruit wherever the opportunity presents itself.

“I wouldn't care if I was at church or if I saw somebody in a nurse's uniform,” said Tisdale, former dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Claflin University. “I told them about our program — and believe it or not, they were really eager to hear about it.”

That entrepreneurial spirit, born of necessity and sustained by mission, has produced something remarkable. Since launching in 2016, Claflin's nursing program has grown from a scrappy cohort of 20 students — the minimum required to get the program off the ground — into a robust, multi-tiered pipeline that has produced 304 RN-to-BSN graduates, 25 Family Nurse

Practitioner graduates, and 22 nursing leadership graduates through 2025. With 83 additional students set to complete one of the three programs in 2026 alone, the total graduate count will exceed 430 — a number that staggers even those who built it.

“This is amazing for a program that is only 10 years old,” Tisdale said. “This is impactful. It goes far beyond Claflin.”

The numbers take on even greater meaning when viewed against the landscape Tisdale inherited. The I-95 corridor running through Orangeburg, Bamberg, and Calhoun counties has long suffered from acute healthcare deficits — too few providers, insufficient transportation infrastructure, and communities that have endured generations of medical neglect. When Claflin's nursing program launched, there was nothing comparable between Orangeburg and Columbia, 42 miles away, or between Orangeburg and Charleston, 72 miles in the other direction.

To build the pipeline from scratch, Tisdale pursued partnerships with regional hospitals and Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, which agreed to funnel registered nurses into Claflin's RN-to-BSN program. She eventually secured a partnership with the entire South Carolina technical college system, dramatically expanding the pool of potential students. A nurse consultant was hired to develop the curriculum, which was submitted for state approval and achieved full accreditation within the program's first year — just in time for its inaugural graduating class.

Dr. Melissa Knight, interim associate dean of nursing and assistant professor of nursing at Claflin, said the program's decade-long arc reflects something far larger than enrollment statistics. It reflects a deliberate commitment to workforce transformation in communities that have long gone without.

“We've created a streamlined, accelerated pathway for working nurses to attain their bachelor's degree and master’s degree in nursing,” said Knight, who has served in the interim dean role for two years. “It really just reflects our university's commitment to provide access for students who do want to advance their nursing degree.”

That access, Knight noted, carries urgent national implications. As healthcare systems continue to emphasize advancing the nursing workforce and increasing the preparation of BSN- and MSN-educated nurses, Claflin graduates are helping address critical healthcare shortages in rural and underserved communities across South Carolina.

“Most of our graduates come directly from this community they now serve,” Knight said. “So, they're serving underserved populations, addressing health disparities, social determinants of health, and provider shortages across the Tri-County area. Claflin’s nursing program, over the last 10 years, is definitely filling a gap and strengthening healthcare access across the region.”

The program has not only produced nurses; it has produced scholars. Seven graduates from Claflin's partnership with Clemson University are among the first cohort set to earn their Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees under the Claflin-to-Clemson Big Cat Fellowship, which awards up to $10,000 annually for doctoral students.

Among them is Patrice Burgess, a nurse practitioner who earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees at Claflin — the latter as part of the program’s first master’s cohort in nursing leadership — before going on to complete her doctoral degree at Clemson. Burgess credits Claflin's faculty with instilling in her an expectation of excellence that carried her further than she had imagined.

“Claflin had me well prepared,” Burgess said. “I had amazing teachers who pushed us to just be great. They made me do more than I ever thought I could.”

The doctoral experience at Clemson built on that foundation, deepening Burgess’s commitment to rural health equity and policy.

“It really pushed me to think beyond just what I could see in front of me and get out there in the community, do more, and learn about rural health more than what I had already thought that I knew,” she said

Currently working in primary care, Burgess has her sights set on quality management and health policy — fields where she believes the combination of clinical experience and doctoral preparation gives her a powerful platform.

“I love policy, and I love quality management, because you need the right policies in place to ensure not only the care and safety of the patient, but also the staff,” she said. “Having the foundation that Claflin laid for me helped tremendously.”

Tisdale recalled one student's journey that captured the program's full arc. A former Claflin professor was walking in his neighborhood when he spotted a woman in a nurse's uniform. He stopped and asked if she had her BSN. “She said, ‘No, but I'm looking into it,’” Tisdale recounted. “He said, ‘Why not now?’” That woman went on to earn her BSN at Claflin, then her master's, and is now among those receiving a doctorate from Clemson this week.

The program's momentum has not gone unnoticed at the highest levels of Claflin's leadership. University President Dr. Dwaun J. Warmack has made the nursing program's physical expansion a centerpiece of his capital development agenda, with plans to break ground on a new public health complex — a nursing building on one side, social science and psychology facilities on the other — funded in part through a $3.5 million Health Resources and Services Administration grant. The new facility will house a state-of-the-art simulation center.

Looking ahead, Knight envisions post-master's certificates in psychiatric mental health and nursing education, expanded scholarship opportunities, and eventually terminal degrees in nursing. The ambition is anchored in a phrase she returned to more than once.

"Our program, at its essence, is really about elevation and transformation," she said. "That's what Claflin University stands upon."

For Tisdale, who has been at Claflin since 1998, the milestone is both personal and profound. She never set out to be a nursing administrator. But when university leadership told her it could be done, she believed them.

"I'm not even a nurse," she laughed. "And they said, 'Oh, you can do that.'"

A decade and more than 350 graduates later, it turns out she could — and then some.