Professor Kotowski brings significant—and unique—clinical nursing experience to her classrooms. After beginning her career working on a cardiovascular step-down unit, she found herself drawn to the oncology field.

As an oncology nurse, she worked in research directly with patients who were testing new oncology medications for the first time, as well as with patients undergoing bone marrow and stem cell transplants. “It was an amazing opportunity,” she says. “I was able to work with drugs that literally had come from the lab and were being used in human research for the first time.”

This professional experience is part of why Kotowski tells students on their first day of orientation that nursing is an amazing profession with an immense amount of opportunities, as well as responsibilities. Before they graduate and begin their careers as a registered nurse, she stresses the golden rule, even quoting it on the last page of her syllabi: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”