Alumni Spotlight

Nurse Eileen P. Magri '78 

One Nurse’s Journey from Farmingdale to Industry Leader

Farmingdale State College celebrates all of its nursing students, faculty, staff, and graduates during Nurses Week 2021, and all year long!

Eileen P. Magri, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, couldn’t be prouder of how the staff at NYU Langone Health Long Island handled the flood of COVID patients in the early days of the COVID pandemic. Magri, who completed her associate’s degree in nursing at Farmingdale State College in 1978, is now the senior director of nursing at Langone.

That hospital was the first to receive a COVID patient on Long Island. Soon after, all 591 beds were full, forcing the staff to convert conference rooms and ORs into patient rooms and ICUs. “It was very, very, very hard,” Magri remembers, her voice full of emotion. But there were silver linings as well. “We discovered a lot of efficiencies that in another time we would never have even considered. Everything just changed so rapidly, there was no time to waste.”

Long before Magri was a senior director at a major hospital, she was a high school student who loved science and always wanted to be a nurse. After graduating from Farmingdale, she went to work for Nassau County Medical Center and was assigned to the pediatric floor. “I thought to myself, ‘I have no business taking care of other people’s sick children.’ But as it turns out it was like fate put me into that clinical arena because I’ve stayed with that my whole career.”

She eventually decided to return to school, and 10 years after receiving her associate’s degree, enrolled in the RN to BSN program at St. Joseph’s College. Magri earned her master’s in nursing, and later her PhD, at Molloy College.

A member of Farmingdale’s nursing advisory committee, Magri is proud that Farmingdale recently applied for accreditation for its own master’s in nursing program. “An advanced degree allows you to look at things with a different lens,” she says. “Always continue learning.”