Audio Clip: Hear an overview of the American Higher Education course from Professor and doctoral program Director Nancy Sharts-Hopko, PhD, RD, FAAN.

NUR 8500 - American Higher Education

Introduction to evolution of American higher education:  trends, issues, policies and procedures.

Issues and trends in health care and health delivery systems, societal structures and organizations related to the delivery of health care and leadership issues in professional and civic organizations in matters related to health.

Curriculum designs and their application, conceptual frameworks, instructional resources, program plans, outcomes and modes of evaluation, including standards, criteria and accreditation.

Concepts related to assessment, measurement and evaluation in nursing education; outcome and program evaluation; testing; clinical performance evaluation.

Theory and strategies for teaching based on the problem solving process, teaching/learning process and the nature of communication in teaching.

Apply knowledge and skills acquired in previous courses to the teaching-learning process and performance of the faculty role under mentorship of master teachers. 

The impact on societal health and well-being of broad social initiatives and government policies will be considered using selected frameworks.

Concepts related to health, nursing, ethics, education, diversity and/or cultural competence will be analyzed as they relate to research and theory development.

The history of science from premodern through postmodern paradigms, including definitions of knowledge, inquiry and consciousness, Nightingale in context, and nursing and biomedical models in context.

Defining research problems, ethical considerations, validity, and various designs including experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive, program evaluation, meta-analysis and epidemiological studies.

Qualitative approaches to research including phenomenology, hermeneutics, grounded theory, ethnography, case study, historical research, combined methods and issues of rigor and confirmability.

Principles of inferential statistical analysis including descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, t-test, chi-squared, F sampling distribution, and effect size.

Interpretation of advanced multivariate analysis including factor analysis, path analysis, analysis of covariance, and multiple regression.

Students who have completed all other doctoral requirements will enroll each semester until completion of the dissertation.

The relation of major philosophical themes and trends up to the twenty-first century to concepts and issues in higher education.

NUR 9511, NUR 9512, NUR 9513, - Dissertation Seminar I, II and III

Audio Clip: Listen to Nancy Sharts-Hopko, PhD, RN, FAAN, director of the doctoral program, describe the benefits of the dissertation seminars.

Development of the dissertation with peer critique of the research question, theoretical framework, review of literature and proposed methodologies.

NUR 9514 - Advanced Research Design

Preparation of a draft of the complete dissertation proposal that will be further refined working with committee members, and the IBR application if relevant. The course grade will be assigned after successful proposal defense.