Educational Affairs
The Jacksonville cohort is part of a UF College of Nursing that continues to strive for national eminence.
The University of Florida College of Nursing is committed to elevating its status as a national and international leader in nursing education, research and patient care. We are fortunate to celebrate many accomplishments in the past year that have allowed us to take the necessary steps to continue our advancement as a top nursing college while also dreaming big about the future.
What’s next as we prepare the best and brightest Gator nurses?
Strategic planning
The college implemented a new five-year strategic plan that is bold and inspiring and sets an innovative, competitive and lucrative roadmap for the future. The new plan will shape and guide our strategic priorities and key areas of opportunity through 2022. Below are highlights of our overall mission, vision and core values.
I invite you to read our full strategic plan online for the specific missions, goals and implementation for clinical practice and professional service, research and scholarship, teaching and the mission integration.
Mission
To provide excellent personalized nursing care, generate research and scholarship that have an impact on practice, and prepare graduates who care, lead and inspire.
Vision
We are driven to transform health through innovative practice, preeminent research and exceptional academic programs.
Core Values
- Balance
- Caring
- Courage
- Curiosity
- Diversity
- Engagement
- Excellence
- Innovation
- Integration
- Learning
- Respect
- Service
I have also been able to participate in the UF Health Jacksonville strategic planning process. As the relationship between the College of Nursing and UF Health continues to strengthen, I am excited to see the many growth and partnership opportunities available to us.
Care, Lead, Inspire curriculum
Every year, we develop a theme that will guide our efforts and focus throughout the months. Previous themes have included diversity, inclusion and innovation. In 2018, our focus landed on transformation. Simply “keeping up” with the changes in health care is not an option. At the College of Nursing, we choose to not only “keep up” but to also “transform” ourselves and advance the nursing profession. Transformation is not an easy process, but it is one we take pride in on a daily basis. Every day, we evaluate not just “what” we are doing but “why” we are doing it.
This led us to the determination that the Bachelor of Science in Nursing, or B.S.N., curriculum required a transformation in order to continue graduating nurses who will use clinical reasoning skills and become leaders in health care. In the fall, we implemented this transformed curriculum into what we have deemed the “Care, Lead, Inspire Curriculum” for the incoming traditional B.S.N. junior cohort.
Courses within the curriculum were developed using the concepts from the college’s tripartite motto: Care, Lead, Inspire. Throughout each semester, students are educated as nurses who embody the concepts of caring, leadership and inspiration. We are excited for this curriculum to be implemented for the Accelerated B.S.N. students at the College of Nursing’s Jacksonville campus when the 2019 cohort begins in May.
New Jacksonville faculty
Over the past year, the College of Nursing has had the fortune of hiring new nursing faculty through the university’s Faculty 500 initiative. On the Jacksonville campus in spring 2018, two full-time clinical lecturers were added to the faculty for the Accelerated B.S.N. program. Michael Aull, M.S.N., B.S.N., and Shari Huffman, M.N., CPNP-PC, previously served as temporary/adjunct faculty members in Jacksonville, and we are now pleased to bring their knowledge and experience to the program full-time.
Michael Aull, M.S.N., B.S.N.
Shari Huffman, M.N., CPNP-PC
Aull has been a nurse for 33 years in the critical care and emergency care setting. He has served as a clinical instructor in the college’s Accelerated B.S.N. program in Jacksonville since its inception in 2015. Specifically, he has been a part of the Academic Partnership Unit, providing our students educational instruction and clinical experience in the Emergency Department at UF Health Jacksonville.
Huffman has more than 30 years of experience in various roles in pediatric nursing in Jacksonville. Her primary role in the Jacksonville Accelerated B.S.N. program is teaching the pediatric nursing content, arranging and supervising the pediatric clinical rotations, and supporting the adult and community health clinical and didactic courses. She also assists in the skills lab and with interprofessional educational activities and simulations throughout the program.
These new faculty members not only provide the resources to help decrease the nursing shortage and educating future nurses, but they will also help move UF even closer to becoming a Top 5 university by reducing undergraduate class size, which is a metric U.S. News & World Report uses when determining rankings.
Looking ahead
As the University of Florida takes aim at breaking through the rankings to become a Top 5 public institution, the College of Nursing is poised to continue our acceleration among top nursing schools. Every day, we look for new ways to align our mission and vision with that of the university and UF Health. As the new year begins, I look forward to filling even more faculty researcher and lecturer positions, enhancing our presence on the Jacksonville campus and educating the future leaders of the nursing profession.
