Ann Connor teaches community health nursing at Emory University's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing by example. Connor takes her students to the places where she practices, such as Café 458, a "reservation-only" restaurant in Atlanta, where homeless people can order meals and receive social services.

Connor, 53, and her husband, A.B. Short, cofounded the café in 1988 with his friend Bob Freeman.

LEITA COWART/Photographer (ENLARGE)

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She has taken students to deliver primary care to migrant workers in Moultrie and has helped out at the Gateway Center, which has a 30-bed unit to treat homeless patients with acute or chronic illnesses so that they aren't discharged from the hospital to the street.

When she was in nursing school at the University of Alabama, Connor planned to work in a hospital intensive-care unit. But during her junior year, professors invited Connor to participate in a pilot nurse-practitioner program that delivered nursing services in rural Alabama.

"It was providential. I felt so at home nursing in that setting," Connor said. "The needs were right in front of me, and I decided to take a different path."

She has been caring for vulnerable people for almost 30 years.

"I see in my students what I have continued to learn about the homeless population," she said. "These are just people. Being homeless is part of their story but not their whole story."

When students first enter Café 458, they often are apprehensive, but as they share meals and make connections with the guests, the fear usually melts away.

"Knowing people's stories changes things," Connor said.

Connor invites her students to look at the broad scope of nursing and to take what they learn in the community back to traditional nursing settings.

In nominating Connor, Emory student nurse Crystal Bailey wrote that when you ask students "who they think of as an inspiring nurse, an innovative educator, a servant leader, an inspiration, a gentle heart and a great mentor ... they will tell you 'Ann Connor.' "