Notable Alumni

Nancy Palacios is a nurse at UT Southwestern Medical Center with experience in neurology/stroke, internal medicine, orthopedics, urology and plastics. She currently serves as the assistant nurse manager on the med/surg unit for orthopedics, internal medicine and neurology. She is the past chair of the unit-based council for the neurology and internal medicine unit and is also a clinical ladder advisor at UTSW.

Palacios has won several awards, including the Meritorious Service Award, the PACT Gold Award and the DFW Great 100 Nurses Scholarship. She is currently working on her Doctor of Nursing Practice at Baylor University and is set to graduate in 2021.

Winter 2017 Sawdust Magazine feature story

Daniel Morris graduated from the BSN program in 2008 and the MSN-FNP program in May 2021. Before he graduated, he accepted employment at the Heart Institute of East Texas where he practices as a family nurse practitioner.

While a full-time graduate student, Morris received the award for Outstanding Graduate Student and continued working as a critical care charge nurse at Woodland Heights Medical Center in Lufkin during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a husband, father and member of many nursing organizations.

Alphonso Clemente is an ambulatory nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital, working in the specialty areas of pediatric rheumatology and cardiology. He previously worked in the med/surg, oncology and hospice units at Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital and as a home health nurse in northwest Houston.

“The time I spent as a student in SFA’s School of Nursing was a great and memorable experience,” Clemente said. “I felt like my class was my family. Our instructors were more than just professors to us. They gladly invested their time and passed on their wisdom and knowledge. This has helped me in being a successful and compassionate nurse.”

Anne James is a maternal transport flight nurse who specializes in high risk pregnancy, labor and delivery as well as antepartum and advanced fetal monitoring. 

Chip LeDuff is currently stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, where he works as a neonatal nurse practitioner at Naval Branch Health Clinic Iwakuni. He received his Bachelor of Science in Nursing from SFA in 2011 and his Master of Science in Nursing in 2017 and Doctor of Nursing Practice in 2018 from Duke University. He recently presented his doctoral project, “NICU Fathers: Improving the Quality of Paternal Support in the NICU,” at the Tri-Service Nursing Research Program's Evidence-Based Practice Dissemination Course in San Diego. LeDuff has served as a nurse corps officer with the U.S. Navy since 2004.