Featuring Dr. Danielle Peekenschneider, biology professor at Wayne State College.
Ask Dr. Danielle Peekenschneider what she loves about her job as advisor for Wayne State’s Rural Health Opportunities Program (RHOP) for nursing, and it will be hard to get a word in edgewise. Peekenschneider, also a professor of biology at Wayne State, is this week’s subject of the Faculty Spotlight Series.
Peekenschneider has been the advisor and contact for Wayne State’s RHOP Nursing Program for the past six years, and it’s a role she absolutely cherishes.
“I’m so proud of all my nursing students!” said Peekenschneider, a native of Mott, N.D., who started teaching at Wayne State in 2018. “When they arrived at Wayne State, they were all so passionate about the field they were going into. Now, they’re working in health care, many in rural communities, providing outstanding care for their patients.”
Wayne State’s RHOP nursing students have a stellar reputation in the industry, which makes Wayne State a natural choice for students pursuing a nursing career.
“We constantly hear that Wayne State’s RHOP nursing students are very well-prepared for nursing school,” said Peekenschneider. “Wayne State is a great college with small class sizes, and faculty really care about the success of their students. Biology faculty are proud to provide rigorous classes to prepare students for their next step.”
“With a nursing shortage across the United States, especially in rural communities, training students to become nurses and go back to rural communities is critical for providing exceptional healthcare in these small communities,” added Peekenschneider. “RHOP helps ensure that we have qualified students entering nursing school.”
Rural communities make up a majority of Nebraska, and they are the lifeblood of the state and deserve quality medical care. Established and successful for more than 25 years, RHOP is a special cooperative program between Wayne State and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) to meet that need. As citizens of rural Nebraska, students have experienced the rural lifestyle and know the unique needs of their communities.
RHOP students complete their prerequisites at Wayne State, then transition to UNMC’s College of Nursing program at the Norfolk campus. After four years, students receive a bachelor’s degree in Nursing (BSN) from UNMC and are qualified to take the NCLEX-RN, the national licensure examination for nursing. The BSN degree is a generalist degree, and some students immediately enter the workforce while others enter graduate school to become a nurse educator or nurse practitioner, or to pursue the nursing doctorate.
Peekenschneider’s teaching interests include general education biology, oncology, and immunology. Her research interests include drug resistance mechanisms in cancer cells and methods to overcome these mechanisms.
Peekenschneider earned her bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida. She also completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at the Mayo Clinic.
Fun Fact: “I have three kids, and my middle son and I started doing Tae Kwon Do about a year ago. I’m not very aggressive or coordinated, so this is something that’s very much outside my comfort zone.”