Shelly Lancaster

After graduating from high school, Shelly Lancaster worked as a certified nursing assistant and waitress until joining the Air Force in 1987. Although her aptitude exams showed she would be a great aircraft mechanic, Shelly drew inspiration from her grandmother who was a nurse and pursued a medic position. After serving in the Air Force for eight years, Shelly left to pursue her education. She graduated from UW Oshkosh with a BSN in 1999. While working as a staff nurse at Agnesian Healthcare, Shelly enrolled in the MSN program at Marian University. She graduated with her MSN in 2004 and earned her Ph.D. from UW-Milwaukee in 2010. She taught nursing courses at UW Oshkosh from 2005 to 2021. She currently works at Advocate Aurora Health as a Nursing Research Manager-Nurse Scientist.

Shelly established the Diane R. Cholewinski Memorial Nursing Scholarship in 2010 in loving memory of her mother. As a young widow and mother of three small children, a career in nursing was beyond reach for Diane. After remarrying and raising her three daughters, Diane entered the foster parent program. Over the years, Diane and her husband, Theo, fostered over two dozen infants, eventually adopting a special needs infant, Johnathan. Diane passed away after a brief struggle with cancer in 2006. Her son Jonathan continued to thrive on the love and care provided by Diane’s husband and children, as well as a dedicated group of nurses and caregivers until his death in 2016. This scholarship honors Diane’s legacy of caring.