Student Spotlight: Ponzellar Jones Follows Her Dream of a Career in Nursing
(October 28, 2025) - Ponzellar Jones spent much of her life caring for others. She put her relationships and caring for her daughter ahead of a dream she never gave up on. One day, Ponzellar told her husband she wanted to go back to school to become a nurse. He asked, “What is stopping you?” She said the kids are in school, and he replied, “That is no excuse.” He encouraged Ponzellar to follow her dream, and she enrolled at Clayton State to pursue a nursing degree.
Before she was married, Ponzellar had to work to pay the bills and take care of her daughter as a single mother, so she didn’t have time to work and go to college. But in her role as a phlebotomist, she trained nurses. In the hospital where she used to work in Valdosta, Georgia, Ponzellar said, “before nurses could go on the floor and start administering IVs, they had to come to me to be trained on how to insert the needle in a patient’s arm properly.”
Before Clayton State, Ponzellar attended Valdosta State. Once she relocated to this area, she looked for a college that met her new career goal. Ponzellar said, “I looked at research and Clayton State was one of the top schools in Georgia for a nursing program, and it's only 15 to 20 minutes from me. So that was ideal.”
Regarding what else helped her choose CSU, she said, “I'm a country girl, so I'm not a big fan of the cities. So, Clayton State is not that far from me, and the campus is big but not overwhelmingly so. I loved it. Everything about Clayton State told me this is the school I definitely want to attend.”
Since becoming a nursing student at Clayton State, she has also appreciated the smaller class sizes and the opportunity to form relationships with professors and fellow students. Ponzellar shared that “One thing I love about Professor Panlilio is the fact that she definitely pours back into her students. I sometimes struggle with certain things, and I know I can talk to her and get advice. At first, I struggled with the idea of being the older student in class. Talking to her about her experiences really put things in perspective. So that's one thing I love about her and Professor Hollis. Professor Hollis is the same way.”
Ponzellar said she has received support from many of the Nursing program faculty. “If you have any problem, they have an open-door policy; you can just come talk to them. All the faculty members are like that.”
As far as where she is in the Nursing program, Ponzellar says, “My anticipated graduation day is May of 2027. Right now, of course, we're a little bit past halfway. I'm in fundamentals. So, I am learning about the basics of being a nurse.”
Her next step in her education begins this semester: clinicals, where nursing students work in a hospital setting with nurses as part of their on-the-job learning. Ponzellar says, “Clinicals for us are 12-hour days. We start at 6:30 AM and end at 6:30 PM. We'll get there, we'll take the report, which means meeting with the nurse who's leaving from the overnight shift. She'll fill us in by telling us our patient’s name, condition, meds, and anything else we need to know to care for them.”
As far as her plans for working in nursing after graduation, she has a few areas she is considering as her focus. Ponzellar says she is looking at one of the following specialties: surgical, cardiology, or psychiatric nursing. “And my end goal. I want to be a nursing instructor.” She said she would eventually like to return to Clayton State to teach the next generation of nurses.