Caleb Armstrong (’19) of Dallas, Texas graduated with a BS in Nursing. In 2025, Caleb earned a PhD in Nursing from UT Tyler School of Nursing, with the distinction of receiving the 2025 PhD Dissertation Award. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the overwhelming amount of suffering and death he witnessed drove him to look for ways to better support critically ill patients and their family members. His research resulted in a 22-item scale to quantify trust in surrogate decision-makers, detailed in his dissertation, “Development and Validation of the Surrogate Decision-Maker Trust Scale.” Employed full-time as an ICU nurse from 2019-25, his achievement will enable him to fulfill a desire sparked by tutoring lower-level nursing students at MBU—to teach full-time at the university level.

Kelly Dyck graduated in 2018 with a BS in Nursing and currently works for ProHealth in Oconomowoc, WI as a charge nurse. Kelly believes that the thorough servant-leadership training she received at MBU prepared her for this role. “The wide variety of learning experiences and the constant support from my nursing professors really helped me transition into the hospital setting. I also had many chances to interact with different people in different circumstances which developed interpersonal skills that are extremely valuable for me as a registered nurse.”

Paul Zemke (’18) is a travel nurse so he lives at various locations around the US. After graduating with a BS in Nursing, he worked at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, WI for a couple of years. He then received a contract to work in Napa, CA; Louisville, KY; and Gig Harbor, WA where he has been able to serve in a church with fellow Maranatha Alumni. A travel nurse is a contracted worker able to work in a variety of locations after having gained experience in their specialty. In the summer, he uses his skills as a nurse to assist a Christian camp. Being a traveling nurse means having a license which can transfer to other states. Paul explains due to the curriculum offered through Maranatha he “was able to receive several states’ nursing license, with confidence that Maranatha’s courses were adequate for even the more particular states.”