Welcome to the Nurse Educator Certificate Program orientation. The purpose of this page is to describe the role of faculty mentors in the Nurse Educator Certificate Program. Students in this program often live at a distance and need mentoring from nurse educators in their home communities in order to meet course and program objectives.
The Nurse Educator Certificate Program consists of four three credit hour courses designed to prepare educators who are also clinicians. The first three courses provide students information about specific areas of nursing education such as lesson planning, use of technology, and curriculum structure. Students in these courses are given specific assignments to be covered with a faculty mentor. Most of the assignments are discrete such as interviewing the faculty mentor about specific topics. Interviews may be conducted by e-mail, by phone, or ideally in person.
For the purposes of the Nurse Educator Certificate Program, the term faculty mentor means a seasoned faculty member with at least five years of teaching experience, who is currently teaching in the area under review. The mentor should have at least a Masters degree and currently teach at a college or university school of nursing. Baccalaureate or Associate Degree nursing programs as well as Public or Private Institutions are acceptable. Mentors are asked to provide a copy of their Curriculum Vitae (CV) to course faculty for review.
If the area under review is classroom presentations, then the mentor should be a seasoned faculty member skilled in and currently teaching nursing students in the classroom. It is expected that the faculty mentor will be teaching in an area of the mentor's expertise.
If the area under review is clinical teaching, then the mentor should be a faculty member skilled in and currently teaching in a clinical setting that is an area of the mentor's expertise. The mentor will have both formal education and experience in the area that the mentor is teaching.
Because mentor assignments cover various areas of teaching, the student may need more than one mentor during the semester. The primary mentor can provide contact with another faculty member who has more expertise in the area of study.
Mentors need not feel compelled to allow the student to interview them about topics unfamiliar to the mentor. The student may need a different mentor when the area under review turns to clinical teaching. It is helpful, however, for the mentor to assist the student to select a different faculty member when needed.
Students ask how they should identify a potential faculty mentor.
One suggestion is that a student may ask the director or dean of a nursing program
near the student's community to recommend a skilled nursing teacher who might be interested
in this role. Another approach involves asking the director/dean if there are
teachers on their faculty who have won awards for excellent teaching. Or the
student may contact a former teacher or a seasoned colleague teaching in the
same or a nearby nursing program.
The time commitment required of mentors in the first three courses, NRSG 870, NRSG 871, and NRSG 873, is limited. For example a student will need about an hour to interview the mentor and separately an hour to observe the mentor in a classroom presentation. The interview may cover topics on the role of the faculty member in the classroom, teaching strategies, audio-visual choices, etc.
In other assignments, the student may need more interaction with the mentor, and thus, the time commitment would be greater. An example of this type of assignment is reviewing test construction and item analysis with the student. At other times, the mentor need simply provide access for the student to observe in a particular activity such as a curriculum committee meeting.
In the final course, the Preceptorship, NRSG 874, students become more involved in the mentor's school of nursing. During this course, the student might need the mentor to provide access to settings in which the student can apply material learned in the first three courses. An example would be the mentor providing access to a classroom setting with a class of learners, so that the student can teach an actual class.
Faculty mentors are encouraged to provide feedback and constructive suggestions for improvement to students in the Nurse Educator Certificate Program. In some courses, mentors are asked to provide feedback to the course faculty as well. However, mentors are not responsible for assigning a grade to a student. Students in this program complete a variety of assignments that are graded by the faculty member in each course. An example of such an assignment in the teaching strategies course is a video tape of the student teaching a lesson that they have developed.
We hope this introduction to mentorship in the Nurse Educator
Certificate Program provides an overview to help the faculty member decide whether
she/he is interested in becoming a mentor to one of the students in this program.
Should you have questions or desire additional information, feel free to contact
Carol Starling at the University of Kansas, School of Nursing. E-mail for Dr.
Starling is cstarlin@kumc.edu and office
phone is 913.588.1687.