“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
It should be no surprise that this quote belongs to Benjamin Franklin. As the founder of the University of Pennsylvania in 1740, he clearly knew the importance of education. Penn Medicine continues this tradition, encouraging its employees to continue learning and offering tuition benefits to help them do it.
Last year alone, Penn Medicine paid more than $13 million in tuition benefits for credit-bearing courses taken by more than 2,700 employees, including the five profiled below. Read how education is helping them realize both career — and personal — dreams.
Always Be Prepared When Opportunity Knocks
Janelle Harris’s grandmother, who raised her after her mother died, always stressed the importance of hard work and education. And it made an impression on the young girl. With her interest in the sciences, Harris, clinical director of Advanced Medical Nursing at HUP, initially set her sights on becoming a doctor. But a high school summer program at Villanova University — in which she spent four weeks learning about several types of medical careers — changed her mind. “I saw the impact nurses made, how much time they spent with patients,” she said, “and decided that’s what I want to do.” She would follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Despite receiving a “full ride” scholarship to Penn State’s nursing program, she chose Drexel to stay near her grandmother. It turned out to be one of the best “career” decisions she could make. Her nursing internships at HUP during the school’s five-year program resulted in a job on one of its patient care units when she graduated in 2008.
By 2012, Harris had enrolled in a master’s degree program for clinical nurse specialists at LaSalle University, to increase her clinical knowledge. “I was not interested in management at all,” she recalled. At the time, she was one of Ravdin 9’s charge nurses, overseeing floor operations. When the unit’s nurse manager left, she agreed to take on the position “temporarily,” doing evaluations and other paperwork. And it proved to be an eye opener. “It just hit me. I asked myself ‘Do you like this work?’ And, yes, I did!
“It was a crazy time,” she continued. “I was doing a degree to get more ingrained in the clinical side of nursing and now I was in the administrative.” She quickly switched to a nursing administration major. Six months later, in 2014, her interim promotion was made official. Three years later, Harris completed her MS in nursing administration and earlier this year was appointed to her current position, overseeing the operations and quality output of four patient care units.
In addition to feeling personally good about her accomplishments, Harris sees herself as a role model for her three daughters. “I tell them that you can accomplish great things if you work hard and get a good education.”
Her advice to others: “Always be prepared for the next opportunity down the road.”
Keeping a Promise
Grady Reicker, a computed tomography (CT) technologist at Lancaster General Hospital, was also influenced by the words of his grandmother. Ten years ago, he helped take care of her when she became sick. He was doing carpentry work at the time, but education was clearly important to her. Knowing that he had gone to Temple University but left after a year, “she made me promise I’d go back to college.”
And he kept his word. In 2010, he began studies in nuclear medicine at the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences. Two years later, with degree in hand, he was able to start work at LGH as a radiologist’s assistant. Soon his career path shifted again, thanks to Rob Leitch, manager of LGH Computed Tomography, who offered to hire and train Reicker if he became CT certified. Reicker followed his advice, becoming certified in 2013.
Four years later, Reicker returned to PA College to start a bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences, “to learn the financial side of health care and work my way into management.” He’s on course to graduate next year.
The tuition benefit has been a major force in helping him advance, he said. “I wouldn’t be getting my bachelor’s degree without it.” That and his promise to his grandmother. “I think about her all the time,” he said. “I even see her face in some of my patients.”
Helping Those Who Need It Most
As a senior community health worker (CHW) in Penn Medicine at Home, Norma Gerald gives hope to patients recently discharged from the hospital. She makes sure they’re eating right, helps them prepare for visits to the doctor, even works out with them at the gym. “Whatever helps a person feel connected, that someone is listening.”
She loves her work. Indeed, her entire career has focused on those who life has pushed down, from her first job at a men’s homeless shelter to working for a women’s transitional housing center . To increase her ability to help, she decided to work towards a bachelor’s degree in social work.
The road to this goal has not been easy. Twice she enrolled in courses at Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) but, for a variety of reasons — including working full-time and taking care of her five young children — she could not complete the degree. But she wasn’t ready to just give up her dream. In 2012, she transferred all her earned credits to Eastern University, taking courses while working full-time. But this time fate had other plans: she suffered a heart attack just after she started. “Traveling to St. David’s from South Philly was draining and exhausting me.”
By 2015 — a year after she started as a CHW at Penn — she was ready to start classes again, this time at Esperanza College of Eastern University, which was easily accessible by public transportation. She was back on track and is now aiming for a 2021 graduation. She said her course work has shown her the many career avenues open to someone with a social work degree but her focus remains unchanged: helping those who need it most.
Finally – A College Degree!
Betty Lawrence, a customer service representative in Patient Financial Services at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, had been a teacher for eight years in Sierra Leone when she decided to move to this country. “The pay wasn’t good and it wasn’t regular,” she said. “I had children to take care of.”
So, leaving her two daughters in the care of her parents and sister, with support from the girls’ father, she moved to New Jersey in 1985 and ultimately landed a well-paid position working at Wonder Bread. She was able to send money and food back to her family in Africa as well as visit them. The only drawback? Her job was to pack donuts “and I gained so much weight!” she said, laughing.
While at Wonder Bread, she went back to school to become a medical assistant, with a goal of later being a nurse. Drawing blood changed her mind. “I did everything initially on a mannequin, but when it came to a real person, I couldn’t do it. I panicked and started shaking. …. No more nursing.”
After Wonder Bread closed, she took time off to care for her young daughter (who had been born in 1991) but returned to the workforce in 2000, at PMPH Financial Services.
Once again, she started thinking about returning to school but she put the needs— and the education — of her children ahead of her own. Finally, in 2015, it was her turn. She started online classes at the University of Phoenix and, while holding down a full-time job, completed a bachelor of science degree program in health care administration in just four years. “I got off work and went straight to the books,” she said, taking only one five-week break during the whole time. “I was determined.”
This past spring, she finally reached her goal. While she hopes to put her degree to use in another position within Penn Medicine, she is also exceptionally — and understandably — proud of her accomplishment. And “very grateful” for the tuition benefits that helped to make it happen.
The Road from High School to Program Manager
Alexis Jackson started her Penn Medicine career earlier than most, while she was still in high school as part of Penn Medicine’s Pipeline Program, which helps transform the lives of high school students in West Philadelphia (Read more at).
After graduating from both the Pipeline Program and high school in 2013 — and a post-graduate internship at the Penn Medicine Academy (which oversees the Pipeline Program) — she was able to get a full-time position at Penn Medicine and continue taking courses at CCP. Her job, as a member of Penn Medicine’s “flow pool” (which provides trained employees to fill temporary openings), sent her to a variety of practices, one being the front desk in outpatient Cardiology. She clearly made an impression. One year after starting in the flow pool, Cardiology asked her to stay full-time. “They were my first Penn Medicine family,” she said.
She graduated from CCP in August 2017, with no college debt at all, thanks to Penn Medicine’s tuition benefit. That same month, she became office coordinator in the Adult Congenital Heart Center. That fall, she began pursuing a bachelor’s degree online through DeVry University. And her career continued the upward trend. In 2018 she was promoted to office administrator at the Center and, this year, became its program manager.
She hopes to complete her bachelor’s degree next spring and is already considering going for a master’s degree as well. “A lot of people just want a job and work towards retirement but there’s so much more you can do,” she said. “People are afraid to move up because they’re lacking in certain skills but there are resources to help, as long as you express a desire to do so.
“Just reach out and you’ll get the help you need.”