SPECIAL SESSION: Preparing Future Nurses for Practice: Becoming a Teacher-Scholar

Description/Overview: This session is being offered to those individuals who are interested in pursuing a teaching position in nursing and want to know about the faculty role in higher education. We will review the concepts of working in academia to include the major areas required: teaching, research, and service. If an attendee is looking for a position as a new faculty or moving from the community college level to the research university focus, this session will focus on the expectations of a new and established faculty member in this endeavor from the perspective of the department/school of nursing to the university level. A trend in nursing education is to recruit faculty in clinical practice to teach at all levels to include baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate. Faculty coming from the clinical areas have strong skills in bedside nursing to independent clinical practice, and nurse executive leadership or researcher roles. Blending these strong skills to fit into the academic setting requires additional skill acquisition, mentorship of other nurse educators, and education preparation. Nurse educators in academia bring skills to the university setting in their own departments and to the university through committee work, leadership, and working with others through interprofessional collaboration activities. Academic nursing practice is broken down into three areas: teaching, research, and service. Teaching is one of the major areas of focus in academia where faculty are engaged in evidence-based delivery of teaching concepts and theory to students at every level. Depending on the setting, teaching may be the main focus of the role of a faculty member or secondary to research. In the area of nursing research, those interested in this area develop their own focus of research supported by grant funding, either internally or externally. Faculty who pursue this area will devote great time to the research process. Service is also an important piece of the academic role. Service may include the faculty clinical practice to maintain licensure and clinical proficiency, participation in committee work, or service to the community. This session will highlight how the role fits from the micro level within the School of Nursing to the macro level of the University.