After serving in the U.S. Army, Rosalina Moore pursued nursing because of her daughter’s lifelong goal to work in healthcare.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in December 2021. Four and half years later, her daughter, Ariana Moore, will do the same this weekend alongside over 1,000 of her nursing student peers.
Ariana acknowledged her mother’s courage as a nontraditional student inspired her to identify a specific career path.
“There’s a lot more to nursing than what I had previously been exposed to, so getting to see it through my mom opened my eyes,” Ariana said.
Ariana said she is ready to enter the industry alongside her mom. She’s set to begin a labor and delivery specialization in a Fort Worth hospital.
Like most mothers, Rosalina’s main feeling ahead of this weekend is a touch of nerves.
“But I’m also very excited for her,” she added. “Very proud that she’s confident and feeling ready to go into this career.”
Nursing fun fact
Ariana’s decision to study nursing in Arlington was rooted in her mother’s choice and in the nursing school’s pedigree. UTA’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation is the largest not-for-profit nursing college in the country.
However, the mother-daughter connection is not exclusive to the university. They both inadvertently had the same professor in two different educational institutions.
Rosalina’s nursing education began at Central Texas College in Killeen, before eventually going through UTA’s registered nurse to bachelor of science in nursing’s program and graduating in December 2021.
At Central Texas College, Rosalina met Veronica King, then a nursing educator for nontraditional students. King is now a clinical nursing professor at UTA who taught Ariana in one of her final courses at the school.
The reunion? Completely serendipitous, King said, and was realized in an email sent by Ariana in the fall 2025 semester.
“Fun fact: I interviewed you when I was in eighth grade. My mom reminded me because she recognized your name on the program for the nursing pinning ceremony,” King recalled, repeating the content of Ariana’s email.
In her 17 years as a nursing educator, this is the first time she’s taught both a parent and a child.
King is honored to be a small part of their stories.
“I’ve known them both collectively, I also greatly appreciate them individually and the stories we have,” King said. “It’s exciting. It just warms my heart.”
A family in a needed industry
King asks all her students, who are seniors in the final months of their education, to reflect on why they entered into nursing.
She acknowledged the industry has shifted significantly since she started. The biggest change is the growing need. Texas is set to reach a shortage of most nurse types by 2032, according to the Department of State Health Services. The demand for full-time registered nurses that same year will exceed the supply by 57,000, according to the Texas Hospital Association.
For King, this demand makes early outreach and education vital for the industry.
“Many of them do talk about connecting to nursing through a nurse,” King said of her students. “A nurse who was at their school, a nurse who took care of them when they were a patient, a nurse who took care of their grandparents who were passing.”
Ariana’s story is no exception. She met King in the eighth grade to interview the nurse educator for a class assignment about healthcare careers. That conversation was pivotal, Ariana said.
“When I was asking Dr. King questions, I realized the nurses are kind of the ones on the scene, in the mix,” Ariana said. “That’s what shifted just healthcare in general into nursing for me.”
The impact is not exclusive to the K-12 setting. For nontraditional students, the support and guidance from an educator is valuable as they are often in a transitional point in their lives, Rosalina said.
“Professor King was my nursing professor in my first semester of nursing school at Central Texas College,” Rosalina said. “She was one of the professors that really impacted us. She showed a lot of caring for us, and really wanted to guide us and get us to become nurses and become passionate about what we do.”
Ahead of the graduation this weekend, King said she is honored to have had a direct impact on Ariana’s career.
“I love that for her, that she found inspiration in (the interview), and I love that she put the work in to get here, because she deserves a lot of credit for that,” King added.
Ismael M. Belkoura is the health reporter for the Fort Worth Report. His position is supported by a grant from Texas Health Resources. Contact him at ismael.belkoura@fortworthreport.org.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/04/30/a-family-journey-in-scrubs-mother-daughter-duos-nursing-story-at-uta/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Arlington Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=519988&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2026/04/30/a-family-journey-in-scrubs-mother-daughter-duos-nursing-story-at-uta/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>