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Putting Minority Nursing Faculty Online: The Story Continues

In the Winter 2006 issue of MN, we reported on one nursing school that has come up with a particularly innovative solution to the current shortage of minority nursing faculty. Thomas Edison State College School of Nursing, based in Trenton, N.J., has received a $600,000 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to fund a three-year initiative designed to recruit and train minority nurse educators to teach distance-learning courses. Training existing minority faculty to teach online will help make this scarce resource accessible to a much larger group of students from all over the country, especially those who live in remote or rural areas.

The project’s first year has been enormously successful. The college enrolled 16 minority nurse educators, who are now nearing completion of the school’s Certificate in Distance Education Program (CDEP). And apparently many Minority Nurse readers agree that this initiative is something to get excited about. According to the nursing school’s dean, Susan O’Brien, EdD, RN, after our initial article appeared the school received a tremendous response from readers expressing interest in the program.

The college is now seeking a new group of participants for the second year of the grant. If you are an experienced nursing educator of color who wants to learn how to expand your classroom teaching talent into cyberspace and teach students who might otherwise never have access to a minority professor, O’Brien wants to hear from you. Eligible candidates must be master’s-prepared with at least two years of teaching experience; doctorally prepared educators are preferred.

The CDEP consists of four eight-week seminars that are conducted entirely online. The seminars focus on the pedagogy of online education, Web-based instructional design--including hands-on development of online courses--and computer and multimedia usage in education. After completing the seminar series, participants will be provided with a mentored online teaching experience in one of the college’s 12-week undergraduate online nursing courses. During this experience, the participants utilize the methodology learned in the CDEP and receive feedback from an experienced online nurse educator. They are then able to bring their new distance-teaching skills back to their own educational institutions.

Eligible minority nursing faculty interested in participating in this pioneering program should send their curriculum vitae and a letter of intent to Thomas Edison State College School of Nursing at nursing@tesc.edu.

But that’s still not the end of the story. To further promote diversity in nursing education, the college will also sponsor its 1st Annual Distinguished Lectureship on Diversity, “Stewardship and Diversity in Nursing,” on October 11 in Trenton. All nurses who are interested in developing innovative ways of addressing the minority faculty shortage, and networking with others who share this interest, are invited to attend. Enrollment is limited to 100. For more information about this event, see page 19.