Nursing Student Claudia Simental Earns Competitive March of Dimes Scholarship
On a warm Friday afternoon in September, Claudia Estefany Simental stood at the fountain outside Smothers Theatre with her family. In a few hours she would attend her dedication ceremony and be inducted into the inaugural two-year BSN cohort of the Pepperdine School of Nursing. Her father, a construction worker, pointed out the fountain's stonework, naming each section he had helped build decades earlier. Her mother also knew the campus well. For years she had cleaned homes in the area, including those of Pepperdine faculty families. Long before Simental became a Pepperdine nursing student, the University had been blessed by her family's hands.
Claudia Simental with her father and mother
In April 2026 Simental was named one of four recipients of the 2026 March of Dimes Nursing Scholarship, a $10,000 annual award presented in partnership with Pampers to nursing students whose work supports the health of mothers, babies, and families.
Established in 1998 by March of Dimes, the nation's leading nonprofit devoted to maternal and infant health, the scholarship recognizes excellence in the nursing field and works to address ongoing shortages in the maternal and infant health workforce. Simental is one of only two undergraduates selected nationwide, and the first student in the Pepperdine College of Health Science's School of Nursing to receive an external scholarship of this kind.
"Every baby deserves a fighting chance, and every mother deserves to feel seen, heard, and supported," Simental wrote in her scholarship statement. "I want to be the nurse who helps make that happen."
A Healer in the Making
Simental knew she wanted to be a nurse since she was 7 years old. Her affinity for the work builds upon a family legacy. Simental's grandmother served as an informal midwife in Valparaíso, Mexico, in the late 1960s, helping women give birth on rural ranches where no medical personnel were available.
Simental also knew she wanted to go to Pepperdine. Since childhood, the Malibu campus had been familiar to her, a place where her mother cleaned homes and her father had laid stone. But for years, her two dreams could not meet. Pepperdine had not yet developed a nursing program.
Inside the ER
As a Pepperdine education was unavailable, Simental began creating her own pathway into healthcare. In 2021 she returned to her birthplace, Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, to work as an ER receptionist. She completed a certified nursing assistant credential as well as an intensive emergency medical technician program at Ventura College before transitioning into an EMT role in the same emergency department, where she still works today.
Simental (far right) with colleagues at Community Memorial
Hospital, with a medical helicopter approaching in the distance
It was while covering for a PBX operator, the role that routes the hospital's phone calls and pages overhead, that Simental encountered her first "car baby." She took a phone call from a frantic father, telling her his wife was about to give birth en route to the hospital. After reassuring him and encouraging him to keep driving, she paged a Code OB, the hospital's signal for an imminent unscheduled delivery. The page mobilized a team of more than a dozen physicians and nurses from the NICU, labor and delivery, and the ER. A minute later, the father called back: "The baby's out."
In disbelief, Simental ran outside to find the newborn already delivered in the parked car. A NICU physician clamped and cut the cord at the scene; the baby was placed in a mobile incubator and wheeled inside. The mother and child were healthy, and Simental eased the fears of the worried father pacing in the waiting room.
"I like the adrenaline and the fast pace," Simental said. "The only places I'd want to work in are the ER, ICU, or NICU. Anywhere that's intense."
Bilingual in English and Spanish, Simental also translates for Spanish-speaking patients in the emergency department. She remembers her first such effort clearly: at the end of the conversation, the patient looked up at her and said, "Ay mija, qué bueno que tú estás aquí," —"Oh daughter, it is good that you are here."
A Pepperdine Nurse-In-Training
After years of building her foundation, Simental's two dreams were finally ready to coincide. In 2025 Pepperdine launched its College of Health Science, the University's sixth school, and with it the School of Nursing. For Simental, the timing was providential. She had been out of high school for nine years and had spent that time building hands-on patient experience in the ER. She applied and was admitted to the inaugural two-year BSN cohort, a class of just 8 students.
When she received the news, Simental's mother didn't congratulate her daughter. "She said thank you," Simental reflected through tears.
"A Little More Help at the Beginning of Life"
Pepperdine's School of Nursing regularly informs its students of opportunities like the March of Dimes Nursing Scholarship. Simental applied with an essay drawn from her work in the ER and her motivations for nursing, along with a recommendation letter from Michael Jermakian, her faculty advisor. She learned of her selection on April 5, during a break in a simulation lab exercise at the School of Nursing. The achievement did not feel real until later when she saw her name listed alongside the nation’s three other scholarship recipients.
When asked about her greater purpose, Simental was direct.
Simental (front, far right) with her Pepperdine
School of Nursing clinical group
"My greater purpose is to help the preemies, the newborn babies that are not given the same chance as others. They're so small, often ill or disabled," she said. "My purpose is to try and help those who need a little more help at the beginning of life."
Her hope is to work in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, ideally through a new-graduate NICU program. Such openings are rare, as new nurses are often asked to begin elsewhere before stepping into intensive care.
"At Pepperdine's School of Nursing, we are intentional about informing students of the opportunities that will provide them with the resources to lead, serve, and innovate," said Dr. Angel Coaston, Founding Dean of the School of Nursing.
"Claudia embodies the heart of nursing. She leads with compassion, perseverance, and a genuine desire to improve the lives of others," Jermakian added. "Over the past year, it has been a privilege to witness her growth. I have no doubt that she will make a meaningful difference in the lives of every patient and family she encounters."
Simental currently attends classes at the School of Nursing four days a week and works 12-hour shifts as an EMT at Community Memorial the other three. Years from now, when she remembers Pepperdine, she will think of the classroom where she learned to take vital signs and the simulation room where she answered the call from March of Dimes. She will also think of the fountain outside Smothers Theatre, the one her father helped build, and of the homes near campus her mother cleaned. On the same campus her parents worked, Simental is continuing on the path she set for herself at age 7. Her work begins in the first hours of a newborn's life.