Singer to receive Distinguished Alumni Award from alma mater
University of Colorado College of Nursing will present award during June 5 ceremony Heading link
Clinical assistant professor Rebecca Singer, DNP ’18, RN, was selected to receive the University of Colorado College of Nursing Distinguished Alumni Award, which annually recognizes a mid-career nursing professional who is achieving excellence in their field.
The alumnus selected for this award is someone who is working toward significant contributions to nursing on a local, national, or international level and has demonstrated ongoing support to the University of Colorado College of Nursing.
Singer will receive the award at the CU Nursing Alumni Association Awards reception and ceremony on June 5.
In 2004, Singer graduated from the University of Colorado with a Nursing Doctorate, which was a predecessor to the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree. Singer went on to get her DNP from UIC Nursing in 2018.
Singer’s work over the last two decades has taken her around the world to conflict zones and other unstable regions where she has helped provide essential health care services to individuals and communities in crisis. Her work has focused on coordinating emergency response services for refugees and other displaced individuals, as well as providing trauma-informed care to survivors of violence, including sexual and intimate partner violence.
“I always knew I wanted to do work that involved radical engagement with individuals, families and communities. I also knew that I wanted to do global work. I took my time figuring out that nursing would be that job,” said Singer in a University of Colorado news story. “I was inspired by an interview with a nurse-midwife who worked for Doctors Without Borders and eventually turned that inspiration into a reality.
“My Jewish upbringing has taught me that repairing our broken world by pursuing justice for all is the most important work we can do,” she says. “Nursing allows me to do that work in so many ways.”
Singer is co-leader of UIC’s Outbreak Response Team, which provides testing, vaccination and infection control in response to various disease outbreaks in Chicago, including COVID-19, mpox and measles. She established the Global Health Nursing Certificate Program at UIC Nursing, a three-course program that prepares students to improve the health of individuals and populations around the world.
In spring of 2022, Singer received a Fulbright Fellowship for Teaching and Professional Service in Sofia, Bulgaria.
“I am so honored to receive this award. Every day in my teaching, I think about my education at CU and strive to bring the energy, knowledge and commitment to excellence that I experienced to my classroom,” Singer told the University of Colorado.