Senior nursing student Mackenzie Handler was recognized as a 2025 Flynn Foundation Fellow. The fellowship places nursing students in internships with the country’s top cancer treatment hospitals. Handler completed her eight-week summer internship at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the world. It is the first time a Marquette student has received a Flynn Fellowship.
“My unit was incredible; they were so welcoming and they wanted to show me anything they could,” Handler said. “I got to observe treatments that I had never seen before, including a bone marrow biopsy. Everyone I worked with really wanted me to learn, which made a huge difference in my development.”
The Flynn Foundation’s oncology nursing development program is meant to address a widening gap between the need for skilled treatment of cancer patients and the number of nurses who are trained to do so. In 2025, the Flynn Fellowship received 640 applications from rising seniors across the country, out of which 50 students were chosen for positions at 14 hospitals. New York-Presbyterian accepted just six students out of 200 applicants.
“Thanks to advances in modern medicine, cancer patients are living longer, but the nursing workforce is aging,” said Fred Flynn, founder of the Flynn Foundation. “There is a critical need for more and better-skilled oncology nurses, and that’s what this program is designed to provide.”
Handler was motivated to become an oncology nurse through multiple family members who have battled cancer. Her grandmother passed away in 2006 from leukemia and a childhood friend of hers passed away over the summer from Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer. Handler’s father is undergoing treatment for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, for which he received treatment from Flynn Fellowship interns at a hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut.
“Being a nurse is the best I can do to be in the fight against cancer,” Handler says. “If I can’t find the cure, I’m going to make sure people have the most positive experience possible while they fight this disease.”
Applications for the 2026 group of Flynn Fellows will open in early December.
