School's first Thouron Scholar

A King’s College London student has become the first nursing student at the University to be awarded a prestigious Thouron Award. David Bendell, who is in his final year of the BSc Adult Nursing degree at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s, went through a competitive application and interview process to be offered the award.

The Thouron Award, established in 1960, is a graduate exchange program between British universities and the University of Pennsylvania. Successful applicants receive support for up to two years for a postgraduate degree programme at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn, an Ivy League institution, is one of the world’s leading research universities. In addition to being the first nursing student at King’s to receive the Thouron Award, David is also the first Thouron scholar to attend the nursing school at Penn.

David, who as Chair of the School’s Nursing Student Council is an active member of the School’s nursing community, will start the two year Health Leadership Master’s programme in September 2011 at Penn’s Nursing Science School. The School is regarded as one of the best nursing school’s in the world and he will be studying with the highest calibre of nursing students and taught by world leading researchers and academics.

For the 2011 entry a total of 117 people applied from institutions across the whole of the UK. Only six awards were allocated from a shortlisted group of 23 applicants who were interviewed. David joins five other successful candidates graduating from universities such as Cambridge, Oxford and Warwick.