Binghamton grad teaches students to embrace the uncomfortable, look beyond nursing for answers

Binghamton University’s BOLD (Bearcats of the Last Decade) 10 Under 10 Award honors alumni who have graduated in the past 10 years, demonstrated a high level of career achievement since leaving campus and show great potential for future leadership. One of the 2025 winners is Nicholas Terela ’10, ’11, MS ’15, an alumnus of Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Terela, a former EMT, former flight nurse and a current registered nurse in the Emergency Department (ED) at United Health Services (UHS) Wilson Medical Center, joined Binghamton University in September 2021 as a clinical assistant professor. He teaches in the undergraduate nursing program at Decker College and also shares his emergency response knowledge with students in the Division of Public Health’s disaster management program.

We asked him how he went from the emergency department in a hospital to the cabin of a medical helicopter 2,000 feet above the ground, why he’s back in the classroom as a teacher and a student, how Decker prepared him for his career and more.

Why nursing? Why Decker?

I have always wanted to help people. In high school, I had the opportunity to ride along with an EMS agency, which led to me taking an EMT class and volunteering with the Union Volunteer Emergency Squad (Union, N.Y.).

When I was a junior in political science at Binghamton, I took an advanced EMT class. Most of that class’s clinical time was spent in the hospital’s emergency department, where I was paired with nurses, learning about assessments and meds and helping people. I enjoyed it and started thinking about nursing. By the middle of my junior year, after talking to some of the folks here at Decker, I decided to get a nursing degree. I spent my senior year completing my political science work and nursing prerequisites. I graduated with my BA in political science, I had a week off and then I started the BAT [one-year accelerated nursing] program!

You chose to go into emergency nursing. How did you prepare for that?

I worked as an EMS technician at UHS while I was in the BAT program. After graduating, I got into UHS’s emergency nursing externship and spent a year working in various nursing units to prepare for the ED. I spent time in medical/surgical, telemetry, cardiac, neuro step-down, intensive care and cardiovascular intensive care. The idea is to get really comfortable assessing patients, giving medications and learning what to do in an emergency. I also had a very lengthy orientation in the ED, where I was paired with nurse preceptors.

How did you become a flight nurse?

One day, while I was working in the ED, the head of the LifeNet flight crew out of Sidney [N.Y.] asked if I wanted a job. I knew him a little from when he was a paramedic with the Union emergency squad. They put me through a pretty rigorous set of intense emergency scenarios, and I had to take an exam. They offered me a job as a flight nurse! I mostly worked out of Sidney, but I sometimes traveled to different bases in New York to cover whatever was needed the most. I also still worked in the ED [at UHS] about two days a week because I wanted to keep my skillset sharp.

Why did you leave LifeNet?

I had some really good experiences as a flight nurse, but I started to think about what I wanted to do and I wanted to get married and not spend so much time on the road. That led me back to the ED full-time. At UHS, I began teaching CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation], ACLS [advanced cardiac life support] and PALS [pediatric advanced life support].

What led you to consider teaching?

I was treating all these acutely sick people in very difficult situations in the hospital, and I wanted to look at it from the flip side: What can we do in the community to prevent people from getting sick or injured? How can we help people manage their health or encourage them to engage in behaviors that prevent chronic problems? How can we keep them from needing to go to the ED? Teaching led me to think about problems on a larger scale, so I came back to Decker to get a master’s degree in community health nursing.

And now you’re on the faculty at Decker; how did that happen?

I always thought it would be cool to transition into teaching and still work clinically; it just ended up working out, and here I am!

What do you teach, and how does your work in the ED inform your teaching?

I teach Pathophysiology I and II, which forces me to stay current on the disease processes in the human body and how we can help assess, treat and manage them. This is in line with what I do in the ED. I also supervise students who are doing their clinical rotations in the hospital. I bring things that happen at the hospital into my classes all the time. I also take how I teach here and bring that to the bedside. I believe teaching drives practice, and practice helps enhance teaching.

You’re involved in Decker’s disaster management program, too. Tell us about that.

I earned an advanced certificate in disaster management at Decker in 2016 under Laura Terriquez-Kasey, and now I help out in the disaster management certificate program she teaches in the Division of Public Health. A lot of it involves helping with the tabletop simulations. We go over what the students need to think about or be aware of. I want everybody who takes the class to look at things using an open-minded, “all hazards” approach. People need to know there are a lot of things that can affect them, and I want them to be prepared to take care of themselves, their families and their communities.

What do you like most about teaching?

Students constantly get me to look at things from a different perspective. The questions they ask or their concerns about content are things that I wouldn’t think of despite trying to keep an open mind. They keep me on my toes! To teach, you have to learn constantly. Learning doesn’t stop, no matter what stage you’re at in your career.

You’re a nurse, a professor and a doctoral student at Decker. You have a wife and a small child. How do you juggle all that?

I have a really supportive family, especially my spouse! My parents, my brothers and my mother-in-law all help out. It’s kind of a collective effort! With my son, I do whatever I can with him, and when he goes to bed, I try to get work done.

Do you feel Decker prepared you for success?

Decker teaches people to think critically, and that’s an ever-growing need in healthcare, whether you’re at the undergraduate, master’s or doctoral level. I learned to look at things from a lot of different perspectives, especially perspectives outside or different from my own. That’s really important because we all have biases. It also helped teach me the value of patience, but I still struggle with that … just ask my wife.

Finally, what did you think when you were told you won the BOLD 10 Under 10 Award?

It was a surprise and a real honor. I was humbled to think somebody nominated me, and I’m very grateful. I want to thank everybody at Decker and the University, who has been instrumental in giving me the knowledge and education to do what I’m doing and inspiring me to continue to be a student. And I have to thank my family; I don’t think I’d be able to be here without their love and support.