New PhD Program Prepares Nurses for Research and Teaching
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With plenty of hospitals, clinics and other health-care facilities within its borders, Tyler is a natural magnet for nurses. And many of them are homegrown, thanks to The University of Texas at Tyler’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
The college is focused on producing highly trained nurses who can go to work in Tyler or anywhere in the country, but these days it’s also making sure that its graduates can move into specialized areas such as research and teaching. Like nursing in general, those fields are suffering from a chronic shortage of well-qualified professionals, something the college and its staff are working to address.
To that end, the college will launch its Ph.D. program in fall 2008. The doctoral program will be taught entirely online, allowing the college to open its doors to students from anywhere. So strong was the interest that, even before final approval had been granted, there were more than 100 applicants, says Dr. Linda Klotz, dean.
“We hadn’t even advertised it, because we had just finished getting all the necessary approvals through the system,” Klotz says. “That really shows the level of excitement about the program.”
Depending on how much time the doctoral candidates spend on their dissertation and research, it’s expected that each will take between two and three years to graduate. Because the program is completely online, it will be global both in nature as well as in enrollment, Klotz says.
“They’ll be looking at issues that can be found anywhere, from rural settings or the inner city,” she says. “Issues from maternal health to access to health care, everything is going to be covered.”
That kind of broad-based approach is a departure from traditional nursing studies of the past, but as the profession evolves, Klotz says it’s important that its practitioners evolve with it.
“A lot of health policy involves much more than you would normally think of as regular nursing activities,” she says. “One of the blessings of this kind of degree is that the people who complete it can stay in their own communities and enrich health care in that particular setting, or they can move into the other side of it, going into research and teaching.”
Producing qualified educators is a major goal of the program. The nation continues to face a nursing crunch, but that’s not so much due to little interest as it is to a shortage of teachers.
“We’re all turning away qualified applicants because we don’t have the teachers for them,” Klotz says. “Now we’re going to be growing our own. And as hospitals look more for nurse scientists and researchers, we’ll be able to supply some of those needs as well.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Todd Bennett
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