KINGSTON, R.I. — May 5, 2025 — Darciah “Darcy” Costa was a high school student when her grandmother, Margarida, was nearing the end of her life in a nursing home after having lived for years with dementia. Costa, who helped care for her grandmother throughout her illness, witnessed a simple but profound interaction between Margarida and her nurses that left a lasting impression on the young student, and ultimately shaped the direction her future would lead.

“My grandma loved, loved tea, specifically black tea, and specifically Tetley black tea,” Costa said, noting the nursing home where her grandmother lived was under COVID-19 restrictions at the time. “That’s not the tea they normally had at the facility, but the nurses always made sure to have that specific brand for her. Every time she drank some, you could see a little of her coming back. I like those little details of nursing, trying to see the little things that make people feel more like themselves at a time when they feel detached from themselves. Seeing the nurses, especially during the end of life, and how they treated her as a holistic person, really spoke to me. I wanted to do something similar for other people.”

It wasn’t Costa’s first introduction to nursing, as her mother, a cardiac care nurse, initially showed her what a dedication to health care looks like. Seeing that dedication in action with her “Vovo” in the nursing home reinforced Costa’s desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps. “Not only did they approach her with patience and kindness, but they tried to bring more of herself out, especially as she was losing more of herself as the disease progressed,” Costa said. “So that really spoke to me and drove me to look into nursing.”

Once her career direction was established, Costa set about deciding where to pursue her studies upon graduating from Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Originally planning to seek in-state tuition in her native Massachusetts, Costa again looked to follow her mother’s footsteps, heading to Kingston to visit the University of Rhode Island, where her mother studied in the College of Nursing. Costa’s visit to the Kingston Campus and the support she received from the University after being named a Ryan Scholar—which provides a full scholarship for exceptional students—convinced Costa this was the place for her.

“It’s very community based, which helps with making connections and friendships, but also with networking and finding mentors,” Costa said. “I found that URI fosters that atmosphere so well. That was something I wanted to emphasize for my college career—having a lot of different inspirations and opportunities.”

Costa has taken full advantage of those opportunities, excelling in the classroom and the lab, and gaining experience from the interdisciplinary clinical rotations that are part of the college’s curriculum. Having worked in multiple departments in several facilities—including Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Bradley Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital—Costa developed an interest in cardiac care nursing, as well as labor and delivery after witnessing a live birth. She has also taken part in research projects with Professor Susan Desanto-Madeya and Assistant Professor Erica Liebermann, with whom she studied national HPV vaccination rates and the barriers that may lower those rates, research she presented at the Eastern Nursing Research Society’s annual conference in April.

Costa’s exemplary efforts were rewarded with the College of Nursing’s 2025 Academic Excellence Award, an honor she attributes not only to her hard work and the dedication of the college’s professors, but also to a decision she made early in her college career to step outside her comfort zone and put herself front-and-center before visitors as a campus tour guide.

“When I first got here, I was very academically minded; I was a lot shyer my freshman year and I may have been limiting myself a little socially,” Costa said. “Tour guiding connected me with so many different people, and made me more comfortable with myself and more confident in my speaking abilities. The Excellence Award definitely reflects the work I put in since freshman year. I have a deeper connection to it because I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the connections I made by branching out more. I found the key to doing well academically is leaning on the support around you. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was just academically focused, and not looking at anything else around me.”

Costa will continue branching out from her comfort zone after graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing in May. Soon after commencement, she will be moving to Baltimore, Maryland, where she will begin her cardiac nursing career in the medical telemetry unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In the future, she hopes to add labor and delivery nursing to her resume, with an eye toward working in global maternal health.

“I definitely want to start as a bedside nurse, but I could see myself doing research and working abroad in global maternal health,” Costa said. “I’d like to do some research with pregnancy complications, and how cardiovascular health in women can contribute to some pregnancy complications, especially in women already facing other disparities. I want my research to contribute directly to health policy to address these problems.”

To that end, Costa plans to pursue a Ph.D. in nursing in the future, which could eventually lead her back to URI.

“I just found such a home and direction here. URI is a place where they take you as you are, but they push the limits you might have on yourself for what you can be in the future,” Costa said. “Having that type of support and vision from people who are so established in their careers is very foundational to everything I’ve been able to accomplish.”