BALTIMORE – All it took Tumara Jordan was a few seconds to decide what to get her mother Peggy as a retirement gift for 35 years as a nurse educator at Baltimore City Community College.
“Education has always mattered to everyone in our family,” Tumara said. “It’s been one of the single most important things.” Tumara surprised her mother at her retirement party by announcing she had started the Peggy Jordan Nursing Scholarship through the BCCC Foundation.
“My mother teaches her students almost like they’re her own children,” she continued. “Over the years, students were free to call her at home just about any time of the day or night with questions. Mom always took the calls. She dedicated her career to students and it’s been so rewarding for her to watch them become nurses,” she said.
Originally from Jackson, Miss., Peggy Jordan studied nursing at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama before graduating from the University of Maryland with a master’s degree in nursing. She joined the nursing staff at the old Provident Hospital and subsequently, began a teaching career at Provident’s Helene Fuld School of Nursing. From there, 35 years ago, she became a nursing professor at BCCC.
Through her own job as a group marketing manager at Verizon, Tumara has parlayed her personal donation of $2,500 into an initial scholarship fund of $5,000 with the help of a Verizon corporate matching contribution. “I hope many of her friends and former students at BCCC learn about the Peggy Jordan Scholarship and join with me build to it into a permanent endowed scholarship one day,” said Tumara, who hails from Silver Spring, Md.
The Jordan Scholarship will be awarded for the first time this fall to a student accepted into the BCCC Registered Nurse program. For more information, contact the BCCC Foundation Office at 410-462-8328.