Faculty and Staff | Post-baccalaureate Nursing

Chair of the Post-baccalaureate nursing program since 2007.  I am a Certified Nurse Practitioner in pediatrics with over twenty years of pediatric experience.  Teaching interests include adult learners, curriculum development and evaluation, and active, collaborative teaching strategies. Research interests, including doctoral work, include collaborative testing as a learning strategy in nursing education and socialization behaviors of nursing students. Enjoys sewing, reading, and hiking in the north woods with her husband and three dogs.

My MSN specialized in Nursing Education and my teaching interests include the adult learner and creative teaching strategies such as the online learning environment.  My nursing experience includes medical/surgical, emergency nursing, obstetrics - including labor and delivery, newborn care, and postpartum care - and occupational health and wellness nursing.  I remain connected to obstetrics through teaching a childbirth and breastfeeding education class to expectant mothers. 

I am raising my family in a rural community and have a passion for quality rural health care that meets the needs of all community members.  I am a hockey mom who loves spending time with my husband and children on our boat and camping - we try to laugh with each other every single day.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is based on the concept that learning needs to be centered on each individual student while encouraging them to be self-motivated to maximize their learning opportunities.  My role as a learner-centered instructor is to foster a positive learning environment that facilitates student learning through the use of multiple types of teaching exercises and activities (Blumberg, 2009).  Active participation in learning encourages students to become critical thinkers which is an essential part of the nursing process that cannot be learned by instructors telling students what they need to know, rather this skill is built through student interaction in classroom activities that builds on students knowledge (Billings & Halstead, 2009). 

I believe personal interaction with all students and open communication that includes student-teacher dialogue creates opportunities for learning that cannot be reached through basic lecture format.  Not only will I encourage open communication within the classroom setting, I will also put forth communication that is clear and concise so all students are aware of what they can expect from me as their instructor as well as what I will expect from them as the learner.  I plan to incorporate a humanistic approach to my teaching style and will expect students to do the same while they are learning as this type of education encourages honesty, integrity, respect, caring, and accepting responsibility (Billings & Halstead, 2009).  Using a learner-centered model with a humanistic approach encourages students of all diversities to be actively involved in classroom discussions through the use of personal stories and experiences – all of which encourage me as the instructor to be an ongoing learner.  As an equal partner in the learning process, I will maintain a strong work ethic and high professional standards while remaining passionate about the field of nursing and understanding of my students individual needs and desires. 

References

Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2009). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (3rd ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Saunders.

Blumberg, P.  (2009).  Developing learner-centered teaching.  San Fransisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.

Cynthia Brown’s clinical focus is in public health, nutrition, evidence based practice, and chemical dependency. Her professional Interests  include Community/Public Health, working with underserved & vulnerable populations, nutrition, evidence-based practice & chemical dependency/addiction, and the harm reduction model. Some of her personal interests include walking, reading, scrapbooking and cooking.

Patricia Nielsen, known to all of us as "PZ" is celebrating her thirty-fifth year in nursing.  She has a Bachelor's Degree in psychology from Eisenhower College, an Associates Degree in Nursing from the State University of New York - Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse, New York, a Master's of Science Degree from Yale University, where she became a Cardiovascular Clinical Nurse Specialist.   After several years of practice PZ completed the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at Regis University in Denver.  PZ started out as a staff nurse in the VA system working on a medical-neurological unit and after a few months, moved into intensive care nursing.  Upon completing her master's degree, PZ held several positions in nursing education and nursing administration.  Her highest level of achievement in that area was as Acting Vice President for Nursing Practice at a private 300 bed hospital in California.  Other parts of her eclectic career that she recalls with great joy include working at a destination ski area in Colorado, providing primary care at a large HMO in the Denver area and now being a faculty member of the Nursing team at the College of St. Scholastica. PZ has received three Bush grants to develop online courses using a WebCT platform and was hired by the Minnesota Partnerships for training to develop an online WebCT based graduate research class. Recently she and a group of post baccalaureate nursing students spent two weeks in Belize providing health care to impoverished indigenous peoples. When asked what she has liked the best, PZ responds, "the patients and the students."

My area of specialty is mental health. I enjoy the mental health area because of the unique experiences it has to offer. The mentally ill are one of the most underserved populations in the country and the number of mentally ill continues to grow. From an academic perspective, I would like to bring more focus to mental health issues of adults and better educate nursing students to deal with them in a clinical setting. Current trends show that many patients in the hospital have a psychiatric illness that coincides with their medical problems and makes it more difficult to provide effective care for them.  Students need to be able to identify these patients and develop nursing interventions specific to their medical and mental health needs to ensure optimal healing.  

In addition to mental health, I also have an interest in the field of nursing informatics.  Nursing informatics is a relatively new discipline of nursing that integrates nursing science with information science and computer science to manage and communicate data and information in patient care. Nurse informaticists are an integral part of the patient care arena helping to build computer systems that accurately represent the nursing care being provided.  I believe that all of our nursing students need to have a basic level of informatics knowledge as they go into practice because they will be working with electronic medical records, healthcare apps, and other new patient care technologies on a daily basis.

Through my teaching experiences I have developed a philosophy is that no student will be left behind. I strive to teach my subject matter in a way that students will understand and find interesting. I believe that if I can present my material so students can see how it benefits them I can make them remember the material and use it in the future. If I see students struggling I find ways to help them grasp concepts and remember the information in a way that suits them. I believe everyone can be successful!

My broad area of specialty is medical-surgical nursing with an emphasis in emergency nursing. My expertise evolved over a 21-year career in the Air Force Nurse Corps.
I have been teaching professional nursing at a community college since 2002. I began teaching professional nursing at the baccalaureate level in 2008. My initial research experience has been qualitative research into how to best integrate simulation into the curricula of an associate degree nursing program. My current research interest is learning how to effectively develop critical thinking skills in nursing students.
 My teaching philosophy reflects beliefs from several theoretical constructs. Philosophically, I believe that adult learning is a self-motivated, self-directed process. I also believe that for learning to take place, the student must be actively engaged in the process. These ideas correlate with Knowles theory of andragogy which assumes that adults are self-directed and self-motivated to learn. I also value transformational learning (Merrian & Caffarella, 1999) which places emphasis on an adult learning through experience, critical reflection and development. One model that I have found very helpful in my teaching style is Chickering and Gamson's (1987) Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. These practices; personal contact between faculty and students, teamwork, active learning techniques, prompt feedback, allocation of time, high expectations, and recognition of diverse learning styles, have served as a framework for the way I deliver content in the classroom.
References
Chickering, A. W. & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 3, pp. 3-7.
Merrian, S. B. & Caffarella, R. S. (1999). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide  (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.