Alumni
Alumni Association: Profile
Pat Zawko ’99 G’00: Changing lives, helping others
(posted September 19, 2011)
Dr. Pat Zawko ’99 G’00, an educator, humanitarian, and registered nurse (RN), has built a reputation for changing lives for the better locally and globally. The recipient of the SUNYIT Alumni Association’s Alumni Humanitarian Award in 2001, Zawko has balanced a professional career in nursing and her own continuing education with ongoing volunteer and humanitarian projects for over 15 years. (Photo below: Pat Zawko '99 G'00 is shown during a 2008 trip to the Amazon while an Assistant Professor of Nursing at SUNYIT, which was a mission of mercy for her and other SUNYIT faculty members and nursing students.)
Zawko, who has taught nursing locally at MVCC and SUNYIT, can relate to students academically, having earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at SUNYIT in 1999, her master’s degree in nursing administration at SUNYIT in 2000, and a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership Curriculum and Instruction as of June 2011. Throughout this time, she has been a role model to students, not only in the classroom as a SUNYIT alumnus who has reached the pinnacle of educational nursing credentials, but also as an adviser to student nursing clubs. In addition to her cerebral attributes, Zawko has demonstrated the caring characteristics of an exceptional nurse, working hands-on with some of the neediest members of our global human population.
Globally, Zawko has been instrumental in organizing international humanitarian trips. During 2000, she organized a 19-day medical mission to Mundau, Ceara Brazil, focused on working with women and children living in domestic violence. She continued this outreach at SUNYIT with the SUNYIT School of Nursing International Initiatives Committee, through which she and other faculty members and SUNYIT nursing students traveled a number of times to work with the aboriginal people of the Amazon region of Brazil. On past trips, she and other SUNYIT participants spent time on a boat providing health care and humanitarian support to remote villages in the Amazon region, enabling some people to receive modern medical care for the first time in their lives.
Participants in the SUNYIT Brazil mission trips that Zawko has helped organize must pay for their own expenses, supplemented with donations of materials and money for medical supplies, as well as cash raised through community fund-raising events such as pancake breakfasts, in which Zawko has been involved and has helped promote.
Zawko’s impact extends even beyond these humanitarian mission-of-mercy activities and academic endeavors. Over the years, she has been involved in a number of other charitable and community initiatives, including volunteering in the Mission Association of her church and overseeing a church program called Children Helping Children, through which children collected returnable cans and bottles and the money was used to purchase food baskets and Christmas presents for disadvantaged youth and their families. As part of her SUNYIT teaching career, she has been involved in a number of community-support fund-raising initiatives, including those outlined in SUNYIT's “Nursing students give back to community” news release and photos.
For more information about Zawko’s work in remote villages in the Amazon region of Brazil, read the “Amazon Adventure” article in SUNYIT’s The Bridge magazine spring 2009 edition; go to pages 8-10 of the magazine (PDF file).
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