Trio of AC nursing faculty are among honorees at Great 25 Nurses event

Three nurse educators with more than 40 combined years of full-time teaching experience at Amarillo College will be among the honorees at the 8th Annual Panhandle Great 25 Nurses ceremony.

The event, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7 at the West Texas A&M University Banquet Hall, is being co-presented by the Texas Nursing Association-District 2, and the Panhandle Organization of Nurse Executives.

The Amarillo College honorees are LaVon Barrett, Becky Matthews and Annette Watts.

Barrett is an assistant professor of nursing who previously served as director of AC’s Licensed Vocational Nursing (LVN) program. She joined the AC faculty as a part-time instructor in 1998 and has taught full time since 2001. She currently teaches level one skills and competencies.

Matthews and Watts both began teaching at AC on a part-time basis in 2010 and became full-time instructors of nursing in 2015. Matthews teaches level three medical surgical nursing. Watts teaches pharmacology and level one clinicals.

Panhandle Great 25 Nurses is a tradition that was established to promote the nursing profession, raise awareness and celebrate the exemplary contributions of nurses to patient care, research, leadership, education and community service of more than 4,000 nurses practicing in the Panhandle.