NEW YORK NURSE: June 2010
by Erin Silk
NYSNA’s Faculty Camp is back and former Army Nurse Corps colonels will present “survival tips” for making the transition to teaching.
Scheduled for Aug. 2-3 at NYSNA headquarters in Latham, this popular program will help new faculty transition to the role of educator and gives seasoned faculty new methods for mentoring. 12.0 continuing education contact hours will be awarded for the two days.
Cost for the two-day workshop is $300 for NYSNA members and $350 for nonmembers. The course fee includes continental breakfast, lunch and breaks for both days. A special rate of $99 per day at Hotel Indigo in Albany is available until July 1. The registration deadline is July 26, so there’s still time to secure your spot at this eye-opening experience for educators.
Presenters Dr. Barbara Penn and Lydia Zager are not only experts in faculty development, but both happen to be retired colonels from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps (ANC). The two forged a friendship over the years while serving together in education positions in Texas and Washington, D.C. They are committed to using the skills of gifted clinicians to transform them into talented teachers. Both feel their days in the armed forces helped to influence their teaching styles.
As director of Member Education for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in Washington, D.C., Penn is responsible for planning and implementing 10 of the association’s annual conferences and other national faculty development initiatives. Her expertise in adult education is evident in her extensive history of presentations, publications, awards, consultant experience, and faculty appointments. She is editor of the book, Mastering the Teaching Role: A Guide for Nurse Educators, which won a 2008 American Journal of Nursing Book-of-the-Year Award.
Penn has taught, administered, and consulted in a variety of settings including hospitals, universities, vocational nursing schools, national professional associations, and national-level policy development. Her service in the Army Nurse Corps spanned more than 25 years, culminating in serving as nursing education consultant to the Army Surgeon General before she retired as colonel.
Penn said, “My years in the Army profoundly affected my view of adult learners. I came to expect that students are bright and capable people who have much to offer, regardless of the subject matter.” This philosophy guides Penn to encourage students to share experiences and observations. “Learners can gain so much from discussion with others, and facilitating those discussions is an important skill for faculty to learn. Faculty Camp will be a safe forum in which to formulate successful teaching strategies, ask questions, and confer with more experienced colleagues,” she said.
Lydia Zager is director of the Center for Nursing Leadership at the University of South Carolina’s College of Nursing and is the course coordinator for the medical surgical nursing courses. She is a popular and sought-after resource for critical reasoning development, critical thinking for action in nursing practice and patient safety, and faculty development consultations and workshops. Her extensive work with graduate nurses from across the nation has helped her “develop a keen understanding of what their needs are after graduation to become successful, competent nurses.” She wrote two chapters that were published in Mastering the Teaching Role: A Guide for Nurse Educators.
Like Penn, Zager is also a retired lieutenant colonel from the ANC, where she served in a variety of leadership positions including clinical management, staff advisor, recruitment and chief of hospital education. Zager credits her career in the Corps for her belief “that to be a good instructor requires training and development and we must develop our students to be leaders in nursing care.”
She helped to develop and run preceptor programs for Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, TX, and Belvoir Community Hospital at Ft. Belvoir, VA. She also served on a national task force for the ANC to standardize the preceptor program across all army military hospitals.
Zager feels strongly that “just as in any specialty, we need to invest in the development of our nursing faculty. Often nursing faculty have not had classes or courses in what it takes to plan, prepare, develop, implement and evaluate a lecture/presentation or how to guide the students during their clinical experiences.” Zager promotes Faculty Camp as essential for faculty both new and experienced and promises a fresh and interactive program.
Faculty Camp will provide new educators with a “tool box of strategies” to guide them as they begin their teaching career. Content will cover theories on how students learn and new strategies for the classroom and for clinical.
Experienced faculty will be able to share with new educators what has worked for them and gain new strategies to draw upon during challenging times. The training will illustrate the importance of providing teaching workshops as a critical component of any new faculty’s development.
Topics to be covered include:
For more information, or to register for the program visit www.nysna.org and click on “Continuing Education” and “NYSNA Workshops.” Or call 518.782.9400, ext. 277, to register for this innovative program.