SXU professor receives $10,000 Nurse Educator Fellowship

Prof. Glenda Morris Burnett will work to prepare students for roles in public health and community-based care

Chicago (Feb. 10, 2012) Saint Xavier University School of Nursing Assistant Professor Glenda Morris Burnett, Ph.D., MUPP, RN, recently received a $10,000 Nurse Educator Fellowship from the Illinois Board of Higher Education to better prepare nursing students for the U.S. healthcare system’s shift from acute care to public health and community-based care.

Burnett, who specializes in community and public health nursing, will explore curricular changes that will provide nursing students with the skills and knowledge needed to reconstruct the healthcare system and place SXU graduates at the forefront of this field. She also will investigate diverse pedagogical models that might be used to achieve these curricular changes. As part of her fellowship project, Burnett will participate in the 15-week National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity Faculty Success Program, with the goal of increasing her scholarly and research productivity.

"It is essential that nursing faculty and nurse education are diverse in their perspectives, especially in areas of race, class, ethnicity, and other areas of practice," Burnett said. "As a member of a group that is currently underrepresented in nursing, on the axis of race and in practice, this fellowship would create an opportunity to continue the development of work in response to lack of a critical mass doing scholarship and practice in these areas."

The Illinois Board of Higher Education’s Nurse Educator Fellowship program aims to ensure retention of well-qualified nursing faculty at institutions of higher education that award nursing degrees. The fellowships supplement recipients’ salaries and defray professional development and continuing education expenses.

Burnett earned her BSN at Rush University in Chicago and her Ph.D. in nursing science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also holds a Masters in Urban Planning and Policy from UIC. Burnett was a post doctoral fellow in the Illinois Public Health Research Fellowship Program from 2006 to 2009, and joined SXU’s School of Nursing in 2010. She received the International Nurse of the Year Award from the National Black Nurses Association in 2000.

-SXU-

Media Contact:
Karla Thomas, Executive Director of Media Relations
(773) 298-3937 or kthomas@sxu.edu