Leadership and empathy: nursing student Mattie Smith wins NODA award

The last thing ETSU student Mattie Smith expected was her name on a massive projected screen, listed under the title “NODA’s 2024 Region VI Outstanding Undergraduate Student Leader.” She didn’t even know she was nominated.  

But that’s exactly what happened at the National Orientation Directors Association 2024 Southern Regional Orientation Workshop (SROW). Smith was attending the workshop as part of ETSU’s Preview and Orientation Leader Organization (POLO) alongside hundreds of other young leaders from colleges across the South. Her program director, ETSU’s Director of New Student and Family Programs Timothy Lewis, had nominated her for the award as a well-deserved surprise. 

Smith is a senior nursing student at ETSU and a second-year intern for New Student and Family Programs in POLO. As a POLO leader, Smith works with new students at every Preview and orientation to ensure they feel at home at the university. In her experience, quality leadership can make all the difference to new students. 

“To me, leadership can embody the idea of being able to guide others toward the same goal. It can be about recognizing strengths and weaknesses of a team and using a team’s talents and passions to be able to give back to others,” shared Smith. “I believe that leadership involves empathy, integrity and a willingness to listen to others.” 

Smith practices those values by finding new ways to improve POLO events. During Preview 2023, POLO implemented a storytelling portion of the event, allowing a leader to share their story before splitting off into small groups to encourage new students to open up. Then, Smith took this concept to a larger scale, presenting at SROW with fellow leader Zane Price, emphasizing that every student’s story matters. 

Looking toward the future, Smith plans to graduate with her B.S. in nursing in fall 2024, after which she’ll take a break from school to work in a hospital. She aims to attend the Doctor of Nursing Practice program at ETSU with the goal of becoming a family nurse practitioner. 

In Smith’s opinion, the leadership skills she’s learned from POLO - empathy and care for people’s stories - are highly transferable to her future roles in health care. 

“My experiences as a POLO leader have provided me with valuable skills, perspectives and experiences that prepare me to handle all kinds of situations in practice,” she said. “This experience has complemented my nursing education by equipping me with the tools that I need to be able to provide desirable, patient-centered care in diverse health care settings.”