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Aug. 21, 2026 – South Florida State College (SFSC) graduated 16 Practical Nursing (PN) program students in a traditional pinning ceremony on Thursday, July 30 in the Alan Jay Wildstein Center for the Performing Arts on the Highlands Campus in Avon Park.
The graduates were Jaleigh Brantner, Zareana Fogel-Thomas, Pamela Garcia-Cisneros, Cathryn Kersey, Hailey Lee, Jannan Lee, Tracy Likens, Jeshua Lopez, Alysia Mayer, Rosa Montalvo, Aleine Petit-Homme, Mackenzie Pruitt, Samantha Rivera, Alexia Segura, Heather Steele, and Biatriz Ynoa.
Jeshua Lopez was the recipient of the Academic Excellence Award and Mackenzie Pruitt was honored with the Clinical Excellence Award, both supported by the Thakkar Family Foundation.
Each year, PN graduates award the Golden D.U.C.K. to someone or an organization that has served as a mentor to the students in the program. The D.U.C.K. acronym represents the foundational elements of the mentoring arrangement: Developing, Understanding, Compassion, and Knowledge. The award was presented to Good Shepherd Hospice for their “way of providing comfort, preserving dignity, and being present for patients and their families during life’s most meaningful moments,” which left a lasting impression on the graduates.
The practice of pinning new graduates has been a nursing school tradition in the United States since 1916 and, symbolically, welcomes each graduate into the nursing profession. The pin is worn prominently on a nurse’s uniform throughout their career. One story of the ceremony’s beginning goes back to 1883, when Queen Victoria awarded Florence Nightingale the Royal Red Cross on St. George’s Day for her service to the sick and injured during the Crimean War. In turn, Nightingale later extended the honor to her outstanding nursing students by presenting them with a medal of excellence.
Graduates of the 11-month Career Certificate PN program each become a licensed practical nurse (LPN) by passing the National Council Licensure Examination for Practical Nurses (NCLEX-PN) exam. SFSC Nursing graduates are usually fully employed in the field within a few months of graduation.
SFSC offers an Associate in Science degree in Nursing (ADN) program for students interested in becoming registered nurses in two formats: a two-year Generic-RN program and a one-year Transition-LPN to RN program. The College also offers a fully online Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program.
For information about SFSC’s Nursing programs, contact Danielle Nuccio, Health Sciences advisor at 863-784-7027 or by email at healthsciences@southflorida.edu.
