KnowledgeWorks is a consultancy that helps reimagine what education can do through personalized, competency-based learning and prepare students for a lifetime of learning. We created a custom online course design guide, complete with their companies branding and aligned their needs for the clients they work with. The guide is an internal resource that they are able to use as they design online programming for their clients. We met with company leaders to determine their needs before getting to work in creating the guide.

With over 16,000 students and 24 schools, Rock Hill School District is a one of the largest and fastest growing school districts in South Carolina. We provided consulting services including a discovery meeting to determine their needs. We also conducted an online workshop. Together, we were able to get to the heart of their expectations for their program.

Collaborative and mission-driven, Deirdre Edwards brings 16 years of experience in online teaching, curriculum development, instructional design and technical systems management.

She has taught online, designed courses, supervised design teams, designed systems of student and teacher support, and served as a Learning Management System administrator.  

Deirdre is passionate about engaging and effective learning experiences and believes that a well-designed virtual environment serves as the foundation for these experiences. She is well-versed in online quality standards including the Quality Matters K-12 rubric, National Standards for Quality Online Courses, and the Online Learning Consortium’s OSCQR Course Design Review Scorecard. Deirdre’s current interests include leveraging best practices from other fields, such as UX design and omnichannel marketing, to improve educational ecosystems.  

In her spare time, Deirdre enjoys martial arts, travel, food (cooking and eating!) and spending time with her family and dogs. 

Connect With Me

Phone: 800-391-2110 ext. 703
Email: dedwards@nvision-ed.com

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Catayah Clark is a passionate and bold 20-year veteran educator with a background in the food service, retail, and banking industries.

Catayah specializes in virtual programming improvement, including, but not limited to, the implementation of effective systems, designing effective training and professional development programs, building instructional and leadership capacity, visioning, staffing, and cultivating balanced people and results-oriented organizational cultures. She has served as a teacher, instructional coach, instructional leader, and school principal across multiple virtual settings. 

Catayah has training in instructional and cognitive coaching, CAST Universal Design for Learning, and Quality Matters online course design. She also holds masters degrees and state level certifications in secondary school administration and teaching and is experienced in the implementation and evaluation of programming based on state and national standards. Catayah has extensive experience in school and program redesign, instructional technology implementation, systems evaluation and procurement, end-user performance data analysis, and human resource and professional development planning and management. She has led the development of online programming guides for program and statewide use and has organized professional development for virtual leaders at the state and national levels. Catayah has led and grown teams ranging in size from forty to 200 staff members, and in K-12 settings, her leadership strategies have resulted in improved student outcomes on state-level assessments and improved school report card ratings. Her current professional interests are in designing for equity, strategic programming alignment, and transforming traditional virtual learning environments into truly innovative organizations. 

When not working, Catayah enjoys weight training, traveling, visiting new restaurants, and spending time with her family, friends, and two poodles – Hersey and Reese. 

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Phone: 800-391-2110 ext. 701
Email: cclark@nvision-ed.com

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Tolvalyn is an experienced educator in the post-secondary and professional development arenas.

She is an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) with 18 years of professional nursing practice, 14 of which she has spent immersed in nursing education. Tolvalyn has expertise in adult learning both in formal brick-and-mortar and virtual college/university settings and in the practice setting. She has a passion for engaging all learners by meeting them where they are and partnering with them to meet their educational goals. Away from work Tolvalyn is a certified scuba diver who seeks to cure her underwater wanderlust through travel and amazing experiences.

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Phone: 800-391-2110 ext. 702
Email: tdennison@nvision-ed.com

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While overt barriers to nursing school admission are diminished, the shortage of minority nursing faculty has a profound impact on successfully recruiting and admitting a culturally diverse student body. White women comprise the majority of nursing faculty at 80%. In a policy brief issued by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in March 2017, it was noted that the percent of diverse nursing students increased from 27.3% to 31.7% between 2011 and 2015. In stark contrast, the percentage of diverse nursing faculty only increased from 11.8% to 14.9% over the same time period. In the state of Maryland (MD), the number of diverse nursing faculty is 24.7% while the number of diverse nursing students is 39.4%. It should be noted that MD has one of the highest rates of faculty diversity in the nation (behind only California, Florida and Hawaii). Nevertheless, more effort needs to be given to attracting and retaining ethnic, cultural and gender diverse faculty.

On my first day of an undergraduate English class, Dr. Hawkins surveyed the room and determined that literature readings that semester would reflect the demographics of the room. We were majority women so we would read a majority female authors. She noted the percentage of each minority group and assured us that we would read an adequate number of authors who reflected each of our ethnicities. While Dr. Hawkins’ process was not steeped in research or grounded in empirical evidence, it did reflect a simple social construct. It is socially logical and reasonable for people to want to be represented in their work and learning environments.

This is true of nursing students, who are in need of role models that represent their lived experiences and backgrounds. To be clear, the suggestion here is not that the only faculty that students should encounter are those that match their ethnic and cultural background. This is the current state for our majority white students who encounter majority white faculty. Instead, I am suggesting that all students need a variety of faculty experiences and that there is tremendous value in having role models whose physical and cultural image mirrors your own. Development of a professional nursing identity is best achieved when nurses can see themselves advancing professionally through representation and mentorship.

Furthermore, as we begin to thread the social determinants of health throughout curricula, discussions about race, poverty, power and access must be facilitated with students. Clinical experiences should be designed such that students are exposed to communities in greatest need of social, political and healthcare interventions. Nursing students must be taught to advocate for patients beyond the bedside. Ethnic and culturally diverse faculty will be able to support schools of nursing in effectively facilitating instruction that helps students to inform a nursing identity grounded in justice for all persons.

Intentional recruitment activities aimed at increasing the numbers of ethnic and culturally diverse nursing faculty need to be implemented. These activities begin with analysis of interviewing techniques and strategies, followed by education of search committee members on evidence based culturally sensitive interviewing. Search committee members, and all faculty need to assess their implicit biases and acknowledge the impact of these on candidate selection and interview feedback.

Retention strategies for current ethnic and culturally diverse nursing faculty should also be implemented. Current minority faculty need to be supported and their experiences as faculty should be assessed. Specific assessments should include: integration into faculty culture, sharing of institutional knowledge, socialization within the faculty, and availability and utilization of support structures throughout the nursing program and college/university. Through these assessments, campus climate can be qualified and intervened upon where necessary. Administrative leaders should intentionally develop training and support programs for all faculty that assist with understanding current workforce climates and making meaningful and impactful changes to address challenges.

Nurses are foundational to improving the health of patients, communities, and populations. Of the variety of healthcare professionals encountered by patients, nurses are the most directly involved. As we begin to recognize the complexities that affect people and their health, who but nurses are positioned to address the whole person and have lasting positive impact on health? Though our healthcare goals for the communities we serve are achievable, we have missed the mark on providing an ethnic and culturally diverse workforce that mirrors the diversity found in the general population. Appropriately addressing this by first increasing our recruitment and retention of ethnic and culturally diverse faculty will allow us to leverage our power and have more success achieving intended outcomes.

References:

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2017). Nursing faculty: A Spotlight on diversity. https://www.aacnnursing.org/portals/42/policy/pdf/diversity-spotlight.pdf

Bennett, C., Hamilton, E.K., Rochani, H. (2019). Exploring race in nursing: Teaching nursing students about racial inequality using the historical lens. The online journal of Issues in Nursing, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.3912/OJN.Vol24No02PPT20

National League for Nursing (2017). Disposition of full-time nurse educators by race-ethnicity 2017. http://www.nln.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/disposition-of-full-time-nurse-educators-by-race-ethnicity-2017.pdf?sfvrsn=0

“Uplifted souls are essential to this work we do in planting and cultivating seeds in children.”

It’s time to get up and make final preparations for the faculty meeting. I’m lying here after having several days to absorb the latest bad news and trying to figure out how to play the role I need to play at the beginning of a new semester. Leading is always difficult, but leading in the midst of turmoil-laden times, when, with each week, yet another stone is added to the pile of a load that is already too heavy to bear, is especially taxing. How do I determine which truths to dilute, which to withhold, and which to divulge? That is likely a question that every thoughtful leader ponders at various points in any given year. To strike a balance between transparency and protection is challenging, and while there certainly are leaders who live by the mantra of full disclosure no matter the bitterness of the medicine, I choose to be more cautious. The late great Emily Dickinson advised us to “tell all the truth but tell it slant” – controversial but wise advice, at times, for leaders. While I would never lie to my faculty and staff, I must practice the art of restraint and use the gift of discernment in determining that which will feed and that which will kill souls. And uplifted souls are essential to this work we do in planting and cultivating seeds in children. 

My husband and I watched the first two episodes of the new Marvel series WandaVision this weekend. In it, the two characters who brought romance to the Avengers movie series, are living in what is appearing to be an alternate reality. They try desperately to fit in and act normal, despite knowing they’re both superheroes who do not belong (future blog post brewing, so stay tuned). At this point in the series, things are gradually revealing themselves to be out of whack, yet Wanda and Vision are trying to maintain as normal a facade as possible. Leaders know a thing or two about aiming for calm and normalcy in turbulent and challenging times. As much as possible, we work to maintain order and motivation amongst our faculty and staff, even if that means bearing the emotional brunt of the forces that seem to be working against us.  

So, in approximately eleven minutes, I will tuck my cape under my dress and assemble the right words for this thing. When I am done, I intend to leave everyone at least as happy and whole as they were when they came, so that we are all ready to pour ourselves into this thing we love once classes begin.