Skip to content Skip to main navigation Report an accessibility issue

Kayla Jones Continues Her Dedication to Helping Cancer Patients through the College of Nursing PhD Program

Kayla Jones, PhD student in the College of Nursing

The Graduate School offers endowed fellowships to promising new graduate students starting at UT. One of those fellowships is the J. Wallace and Katie Dean Graduate Fellowship, which provides $10,000 for each recipient, who was nominated by their department or college. One of those recipients for the 2019–2020 academic year is Kayla Jones.

Jones began volunteering at the Norton’s Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky—two hours away from her hometown in Columbia—when she was in grade school. Touched by some of the young patients she met, she began raising money to fight pediatric cancer. She even wrote a young adult novel about a girl fighting cancer to help in raising funds for pediatric oncology. Now Jones is taking her desire to help young cancer patients a step further: she is beginning a doctoral program in the College of Nursing with the goal of doing research that will improve cancer treatments.

Read more about Kayla Jones, the incredible work she has already done, and how the PhD program at UT will allow her to do even more.