The University of Minnesota School of Nursing announced a scholarship March 24 honoring Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal immigration enforcement agents earlier this year.
Nursing students at the University said they are excited about the announcement of the scholarship, as Pretti had mentored students at the nursing school.
The scholarship intends to help and support pre-licensure nursing students at the University, especially those with an interest in veterans affairs, which was Pretti’s area of practice.
The University’s School of Nursing said in a statement that the scholarship was created to support nursing students who are struggling to pay for their education. The statement also said the scholarship honors Pretti as he represented the school’s values with his mentorship and his job as an intensive care unit nurse at the VA medical center.
“It was created to honor the legacy of a man who embodied the core principles of the nursing profession through his work as an ICU nurse, mentor and preceptor to our Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students,” the statement said. “The scholarship fund addresses a practical challenge that many nursing students face today: the cost of education.”
Reagan Rogers, a third-year nursing student, said she is happy the University is having a scholarship to honor Alex Pretti, as he was involved with the nursing program and mentored the students.
“I’m very excited that they’re honoring Alex,” Rogers said. “He was a very big part of the school, and he was an educator and a clinical preceptor which, as students, we get very close to our clinical preceptors.”
Nurses play a major role in the community overall, Rogers said. Nursing students are being taught to stand beside each other and support the community, especially in terms of political violence.
“It’s important for the University and the School of Nursing in particular to show that we are teaching our students that nurses should be standing with one another,” Rogers said. “We as nurses should be fighting back political violence and misuse of power because as nurses, we’re advocates for the community.”
The School of Nursing additionally shared a statement from Pretti’s family regarding the scholarship. His family said he woul have been pleased with the scholarship to support nursing students, as he contended with student loans himself.
“Alex struggled with education debt and would be very happy that this scholarship exists,” the Pretti family said. “Again, we thank you for thinking of him and honoring his memory with this scholarship.”
Gabe Smith, a third-year nursing student who completed one of his clinical rotations at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center alongside Pretti, said the announcement of the scholarship allows students to recognize the advocacy that Pretti did to help and serve the community in Minneapolis.
“I think it’s a homage to Alex Pretti as a VA nurse and what he did for the community,” Smith said. “It will give students the opportunity to not only have that support, but also recognise where it’s coming from and everything that he did to kind of foster an environment that provided an opportunity for the school to create a scholarship like that.”
Smith said that as Pretti mentored and supported nurses at the University, he led a pathway for current students with their future careers in the medical field.
“He did a lot, and I think it’s really important that we recognize that,” Smith said. “Especially that he was training Minneapolis and U of M nurses, and he was giving back, and he was showing what it means to be a nurse and giving us a good example to follow moving forward in our own careers.”
Another third-year nursing student expressed a similar sentiment about the scholarship. Sasha Nield said, with the University community being impacted by the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge, it is essential to have a scholarship for nursing students, as Pretti worked as a nurse.
“The scholarship is important because for him to be in his name, he is a very important person to have it for,” Nield said. “There’s a lot of people that have been impacted by things recently but it’s important for it to be nursing because he was a nurse that went here, and that’s why the scholarship is specific to him.”
Nield expressed how the continuous need for financial aid amongst students within the School of Nursing is frequent and how related essay prompts oftentimes accompany scholarship applications. She thinks this may act as an incentive to get people to remember Pretti each year.
“I think the whole point of the scholarship is to remind us of what happened every single year,” Nield said. “I hope it’s open every year so that we get to think about him and have a little piece of him carried on.”
