CoN Nursing Newsletter Deans Message Sept 2025
Students, faculty, colleagues and friends,
Thank you for reading our college newsletter! We hope you’ve had a successful start to your Fall 2025 semester.
In the College of Nursing, we’ve hit the ground running this fall. Here are just a few highlights:
Just before the semester started, we celebrated our latest graduating class at the pinning ceremony on Aug. 20. We honored 96 new nurses who will go out and make a difference in our region and beyond. Congratulations to the newest members of the Class of 2025!
As part of this tradition, we honor the College’s newest Daisy Award winner. This year, we celebrated Angelica Martinez, who displayed extraordinary compassion, strength and empathy while caring for a young oncology patient and her family. Students like Angelica demonstrate the best of our college, and the best of our profession.
We celebrated welcoming 158 new professional nursing students on Sept. 15. These talented individuals are embarking on an exciting new phase of their education, and we look forward to seeing the great things they do.
We’re also reconnecting with old friends during Homecoming, where we will honor our Gold Nugget Award recipient, Mimi E. Veloso, DNP. This certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) and Army veteran defines resilience and service to communities in need. Through the military, she’s served patients around the world before returning to El Paso, where she established UTEP’s Freddie Caldwell DNP Scholarship, which assists aspiring nursing doctoral students.
In addition to Homecoming Week, September includes Healthcare Simulation Week, when we honor the team that maintains our state-of-the-art Simulation Lab. This space, with high-fidelity mannequins and realistic settings, provides our students with a safe and smart environment where they can build confidence and learn effectively.
Finally, the College of Nursing was excited to be part of major University news: UTEP surpassed an enrollment of 26,000 for the first time in its history, in part because of a surge of nearly 12% in Nursing enrollment this year. We thank our faculty for their efforts, and our students, new and returning, for their dedication to their educational goals.
Thank you to everyone for their fantastic work so far. Let’s make this semester a great one!
Go Miners!
Leslie K. Robbins, PhD, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, PMHNP-BC (NM), FAANP, ANEF
Dean and Professor
