---
title: How One Arizona College of Nursing Student Landed Her Dream Nursing Job Before Graduation Through Clasp
url: "https://arizonacollege.edu/blog/azcn-student-dream-nursing-job-through-clasp/"
type: post
date_published: 2026-08-10
date_modified: 2026-08-10
schema:
  @type: Article
language: en-US
word_count: 1631
reading_time: 9 min
canonical: "https://arizonacollege.edu/blog/azcn-student-dream-nursing-job-through-clasp/"
featured_image: "https://arizonacollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Arizona-College-of-Nursing-BSN-Students-Celebrating-Together.webp"
categories:
  - Nursing Careers
  - Nursing School
topic:
  - Financial Aid
  - Nursing
  - Resources
---

# How One Arizona College of Nursing Student Landed Her Dream Nursing Job Before Graduation Through Clasp

![Arizona College of Nursing BSN Students Celebrating Together](https://arizonacollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Arizona-College-of-Nursing-BSN-Students-Celebrating-Together.webp)

_Arizona College of Nursing’s Partnership with Clasp helped one student land a job, a paid move, and opportunity to have $30,000 in student loans paid off._

---

Some people spend their whole lives searching for their calling. But for one of
our graduating BSN students at
[Arizona College of Nursing (AZCN)](https://arizonacollege.edu/), caring for
others was second nature from the very start.

“I was born to be a nurse. I started out when I was nine years old…taking care
of a family member. Then I was a paid caregiver at 18, I became a [Certified
Nursing Assistant (CNA)] in my early 20s, and then I got my associates in
allied health. I’d been a medical assistant for 11 years, so just when I topped
out as a medical assistant, it was time to just go ahead and finish out the
nursing,” shared Rebecca Cathey, a semester 9 student at
[Arizona College of Nursing’s Tempe Campus](https://arizonacollege.edu/tempe-nursing-school/)
.

When it came to take that next step and
[pursue her BSN](https://arizonacollege.edu/accredited-bsn-program/), she chose
a path that allowed her to jump right into her passion without any delay.

“I have a couple of friends [who went to AZCN], so they told me there was no
wait list, you jump right in. I think I left a message on a Friday, got a call
back on Monday, and I was in classes by Thursday.”

Now, as she prepares for graduation in August 2026, she is stepping into a new
chapter of her career in the Mother-Baby Unit at Lovelace Women’s Hospital. Even
better? She secured this job weeks before crossing the stage at graduation, and
she is getting up to $30,000 in student loan repayment while doing it through
Arizona College of Nursing’s partner with [Clasp](https://www.clasp.com/).

## Discovering Clasp

While working toward her BSN, Rebecca kept an eye out for ways to keep her
education affordable. One day, an email sitting in her inbox from the College
altered her path for the better.

![Rebecca Cathey Arizona College of Nursing Student](https://arizonacollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Rebecca-Cathey-Arizona-College-of-Nursing-Student.webp?w=637)

“It was just one of those emails that everybody gets like, ‘oh, hey, here’s an
opportunity anybody might be interested in.’ I’ve always wanted to be a nurse,
but I didn’t always want to pay to be a nurse. I have been looking for ways to
get my education paid since before I started,” Rebecca said.

That email was about the Clasp program, which offers nursing students job
security before graduation and student loan repayment opportunities. Through
Clasp, future nurses are matched with health systems that make direct monthly
payments to student loans as soon as full-time employment begins.

“That’s what really hit me, the fact that they were willing to pay a good
portion of my loans off,” Rebecca added.

With Clasp’s $30,000 given toward student loans, Rebecca is set to wipe out a
good portion of her student debt in over 3 years. Plus, they are set up to help
fund her future master’s degree!

## The Clasp Application Process

According to Rebecca, applying through Clasp was quick and easy. She explained
that she applied on the Clasp website and that much of the application was based
around her and her personal career goals.

“They have just a real basic short application and then they have a recruiter
that will reach out to you. The recruiter will have a conversation [to learn]
where you’re trying to go, what you’re trying to accomplish, what your interests
are, what states you are willing to look into, and we had the conversation about
what my goals were,” shared Rebecca.

Once she connected with the first recruiter to discuss what she was looking for
in a job post graduation, she was set up with interviews at the different
hospitals Clasp partners with. For Rebecca, Lovelace Women’s Hospital caught her
eye. She explained that throughout her career, she had always wanted to get into
women’s health.

Rebecca spoke with their recruiter and got set up for interviews at Lovelace
Women’s Hospital. The specific role was working in the NICU with mothers,
babies, labor, and delivery.

## Preparing for the Move to Albuquerque

Relocating to a new state with two kids sounds like a lot, especially for a
single mom of two. However, Clasp and Lovelace teams have helped make the entire
process as stress-free as possible for Rebecca and her family.

According to Rebecca, she was provided with:

**Full-Service Movers:** They handle the heavy lifting, packing everything up
from her current home in Arizona and dropping it off to her new one in New
Mexico.

**Family and Pet-Friendly Housing:** A dedicated real estate agent helped her
find the perfect rental for her, her two kids, and her cat!

**A Shift to Shadow:** Lovelace flew Rebecca out for a 6-hour shift so that she
could meet the day and night teams she may be working with, tour the hospital,
and make sure it felt like a great fit prior to signing the contract.

According to Rebecca, her kids are not only proud of their mother for securing
this job but already obsessed with the move. On a
[clinical rotation](https://arizonacollege.edu/accredited-bsn-program/skills-and-science-lab/)
, a respiratory therapist told Rebecca about New Mexico’s famous “Singing
Highway,” which is a stretch of road near Albuquerque with a section of rumble
strips that play ‘America the Beautiful’ when you drive over them. Now, her 5
and 8-year-olds are telling their friends they get to drive on the musical road
every day.

“My kids are just so excited for a new adventure…and now my kids are over the
top… [because] we are going to go to the singing roads every day,” Rebecca
said.

## From Hospice Care to Bringing New Life Into the World

For Rebecca, stepping into a role in women’s health and neonatal care feels like
a full-circle moment in her career.

“As a CNA, I did hospice for 11 years. I spent a good portion of my career
watching life leave this world. So, I always had this thought it would be
amazing to end my career bringing life into the world,” said Rebecca.

Her passion to work in labor and delivery was strengthened during her clinicals
where she worked multiple rotations in the NICU. It was there that she
discovered her love for caring for neonates.

“I think that’s going to be my end goal now,” Rebecca explained. “I’m going to
start in the mother-baby unit and possibly do a rotation into labor and delivery
with the NICU.”

In this role at Lovelace, Rebecca is getting to work on her passion and combine
her 10+ years of healthcare experience with high-energy, compassionate bedside
care.

![Two AZCN BSN Students Smiling](https://arizonacollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Two-AZCN-BSN-Students-Smiling.webp?w=1024)

## Getting Support Through AZCN

According to Rebecca, nursing school was rewarding but not without its
challenges. It takes real drive and hard work when you are balancing classes
with your personal life. Rebecca credits her family’s incredible support,
including her mom, as well as her many mentors on campus for helping her succeed
in nursing school.

“Being able to accomplish [nursing school] in such a short period of time,
really set me to where I feel like I could go rule the world now. Like if I can
do this program, I can do anything,” Rebecca shared. “My family helped me and if
I didn’t have my mom here, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this
program.”

When things got tough in and out of school, Rebecca also explained that there
were many faculty members willing to step up and help.
[Maryn Moreni](https://arizonacollege.edu/blog/from-aspiring-doctor-to-nursing-professor-maryn-morenis-path-to-azcn/)
, MSN-FNP, RN, CNE, a full-time faculty member and associate professor at
Arizona College of Nursing, stuck out for Rebecca as she always was willing to
help with 1-on-1 tutoring and encouragement to make sure she felt confident with
class material.

“Professor Moreni was amazing. There [were] a couple of times where I [was]
on the struggle bus and didn’t know how I [was] going to get through…I pushed
through and she’s pulled me up,” Rebecca recalled.

Her bond with Professor Moreni was so strong through the program that she
actually will be doing her official pinning at graduation.

## Rebecca’s Advice for Fellow Students

If you are sitting on the fence about applying for Clasp or putting yourself out
there for early interviews as you head into the workforce, Rebecca’s advice is
to “just go for it.”

“Even if you don’t accept a job out of state and work with the program, just
doing the interview with the recruiters and jumping into that is such a good
experience that will set you up for other interviews,” Rebecca said.

Rebecca said that this program has also opened her eyes to everything you can do
with a nursing degree.

“I’ve looked into travel nursing, in-flight dialysis nurses…Medicare and
Medicaid. They have nurses that review charts and do prior authorizations.
There’s just so many different aspects I never knew were there besides bedside,”
she explained.

Opportunities like Clasp are designed to help our students secure a job long
before they graduate while also helping pay off student loans.

---

**Clasp is currently partnered with Arizona College of Nursing’s [Las Vegas](https://arizonacollege.edu/las-vegas-nursing-school/) and [Tempe](https://arizonacollege.edu/tempe-nursing-school/) campuses.**

**Categories:** Nursing Careers, Nursing School