University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Assistant Professor of Nursing Priscilla Simms-Roberson is a 2020 winner of a statewide Harold Love Outstanding Community Service Award. The awards go to five honorees chosen each year for serving as ambassadors for community service among Tennessee’s diverse higher education communities.
A UTC student, Briana Brady, is one of the winners of the Harold Love Award for Tennessee college students.
Simms-Roberson, a licensed nurse practitioner, received a doctoral degree in nursing practice from UTC in 2016 and a master’s degree in nursing from Vanderbilt University ten years earlier. She joined UTC as a member of nursing faculty in May 2016, where she teaches students in the master’s degree program and offers an online Introduction to Forensic Nursing course for undergraduate and graduate students.
While at Vanderbilt, Simms-Roberson specialized in forensic nursing and has continued to practice in that area of nursing, providing forensic medical exams to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. In 2017, she developed the first domestic violence examiner program in the state of Tennessee and is today certified as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE-A) through the International Association of Forensic Nursing. Simms-Roberson has presented her research in forensic nursing at multiple national and international conferences.
Her career as a nurse practitioner has involved a variety of settings from primary care to community health, home health to long-term care. In addition to teaching at UTC, Simms-Roberson also is a primary health care provider at CHI Memorial Community Health Clinic in Chattanooga and a forensic nurse examiner at Partnership for Families, Children and Adults.
The Harold Love Outstanding Community Service Award was named for the late Tennessee Rep. Harold Love Sr., who led the establishment of the awards program in 1991.
Cindy Thomas
Congratulations, Priscilla. A most deserving recipient.