Donna DeGracia, MPAS, PA-C | Past President's Award

MAPA Immediate Past President Heather Bidinger chose Donna DeGracia as the recipient of the 2021 Past President’s Award which is awarded annually to an individual whose contributions to the PA profession in Minnesota and/or MAPA, have been exceptional. Donna is the curriculum director and academic coordinator at St. Catherine University, where she first consulted and co-created the innovative and integrated curriculum. Prior to this work, she was a principal faculty member at the Augsburg College PA Program for over 10 years. She has taught and mentored over 24 years PA cohorts, roughly touching over 760 MN PA students’ learning, professional development, and ability to step into practice as a PA with a strong fund of knowledge, critical thinking skills and a passion for social equity. Congratulations, Donna!

Message from Heather:

"Under Donna’s leadership, I first became aware and learned more deeply, the concept of global responsibility and equity in healthcare firsthand when I journeyed to Nicaragua in 2005 with her, joining her to secure clinical rotations, but also learning to co-teach an interprofessional group of PA, NP, and Leadership students in a course of global search for justice. This is a course she developed that is still running today at Augsburg, through the office of Global Education. She also handed to me, leadership of that course for the next year. In doing so, she mentored to me a model we all know dearly in medical education: see one, do one, teach one. This is an important area of impact she has had for students and thus grads and to so many now in practice. She creates opportunities and passes on opportunities, not just for learning, but for growth and encourages others to do the same.

Global opportunities for learning have existed for SO many of our MN PAs due to the work, prioritization and community building Donna has undertaken to create avenues for students to learn from others in both our local global community and internationally. She is an advocate that these experiences must have bidirectional support and learning, sustainability, and the opportunity to integrate culture. Seeking and finding sites while generally difficult, might have been the easy part. Not only taking opportunities to learn but finding avenues in which giving back to the communities welcoming students, are values she upholds and would go the extra mile to ensure the global experience met these standards. Donna created collaborative cultures and relationships in many countries through Academic institutions that many graduates have benefitted from.

Doing this same collaboration locally teaches students about people and their communities as it relates to health but also elevates the role of PAs and the work PAs do in our communities. Donna established the community engagement track of St. Kate’s PA Program, implementing these opportunities and mentoring other faculty to lead it. This is one memorable and transformative experience for students.

Doing things in support of others is a common theme in the impact she has had. I experienced my first successful grant reward, when I was invited to participate in Donna’s initiative, on behalf of a rural clinical of one of our international sites. This opened my eyes to a realm I had not experienced, that our knowledge and creations can be submitted on behalf of others or to assist in that co-creation of bidirectional experiences.

Donna is personally responsible for my journey into the realm of academia, having first recruited me to precept an FYCE (first year clinical experience) or ICE (integrated clinical experience) and then to guest lecture in women’s health. A desire of mine since PA school, she provided the opportunity for hands-on application of what life looks like in academia. Application and integration of knowledge as it relates to one’s profession is where she gets this right in education. Teach students to think and problem solve, they can handle tough stuff in the beginning and not wait to put it all together at the end.

Donna’s clinical practice ranges from rural Colorado primary care, serving the needs of Hispanic families in a large house used for a clinic, to McDonough Community Health Clinic in St. Paul, with sites of Urgent Care at various and continuous stages of her career; always inviting students to join her in clinical work. She has precepted many students and worked alongside graduates she has, in previous years, trained. Currently she is the primary PA preceptor for a student run, free health clinic sponsored through St. Mary’s health clinics and St. Kates.

Aside from her work with students and graduates Donna’s work has touched our profession, locally and nationally. She was an advocate for the Minnesota foreign medical graduate committee for many years before impacting a new process for admissions. She has been a steady leader with PAs in Global Health – having been on the National PA Education Global Health committee in the early 2000’s and later, hosting the National PA Global Health conference here in MN, engaging professionals from many healthcare programs, not just PAs. In the recent years, she has extended that leadership to representing our profession through her leadership and work in the MN Public Health Association.

A PA for “more years than most of us have been alive” is how she introduces herself to most of our applicants. She grew up as a missionary kid in South Korea and later returned for service in the Peace Corp. One of my favorite stories, (and there are so many) is how she took an orphan flight, back to the US for her PA school interview. This was not an “orphaned flight” as she was the only passenger, no… she cared for infants and toddlers across an international flight, landing hours before her PA interview. Another favorite story for which she personally shifted my perspective to my vocation and frankly this concept, of anyone can make things happen, is a time when transportation was not available for a class project at Augsburg. Senior citizens were unable to get to a health fair which was a culminating project of shared learning with these elders and students. Donna took a licensing exam to drive a bus so as to take them there herself. For a while, Donna Document was her nickname, as she can whip up if you will, any paper, rubric or assessment needed within minutes. She has embodied this mindset that changed me and that I hope inspires others, “let’s do it, let’s get it done.”

I probably have it in me to write a white paper on Donna’s contributions and impact to our profession, she certainly has had a profound impact on my own calling and vocation to this work and I ascribe much of what I’ve learned to her insight, wisdom and collaboration. She has touched hundreds of PAs lives as she shaped and challenged them to be their best and through that impacted hundreds of thousands of patient encounters!

She has accomplished all this while being the matriarch of her family. She is a mother of 4 adult children and many grandkids, and she is not just a figure in the family. She is on the ground, supporting kids and grandkids along the way, being integral and present in their lives. The pride and admiration her family holds for her, I only hope to have earned in my own family as they grow. Donna’s impact in PA education in her current role will likely come into retirement sooner than later, but her mentorship and leadership will persist.

Now an author of three books, the most recent one, In Reconstructing Hope, Donna, two-time breast cancer survivor herself, offers support for people living out any stage of their breast cancer marathon. She has recently started podcasting in this area. Her impact to others is never-ending and will continue to impact and support people.

Donna is most deserving. She has been nominated for many awards over the years and I’m grateful and appreciative for the opportunity to grant this award to celebrate and honor her contributions of a lifetime with this MAPA Past President Award. Please help me congratulate: Donna DeGracia."