In an effort to increase faculty development, foster a wide range of nurse leaders, promote nursing education, and attract and retain the brightest academic minds, five Maryland schools of nursing—led by the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing—have launched an annual Academic Leadership Academy.
The first iteration, "Discovering Leadership for the Future," was held in January at the JHU School of Nursing, where Pamela R. Jeffries, a professor in the Department of Acute and Chronic Care and the university's vice provost for digital initiatives, has spearheaded the effort. It featured handpicked participants from nursing programs at Johns Hopkins, Coppin State, Stevenson, and Towson universities, and the University of Maryland.
The schools' shared goals are to enhance the skills of current leaders, provide succession planning, and develop emerging leaders in the academic and clinical arenas; promote nursing education as a desired career path by developing academic nurse leaders and providing support to them; and recruit and keep quality faculty.
Participants were required to submit a leadership project to be addressed at the academy, which also offered workshops titled Leading Change and Managing Transitions; Boundary-Spanning Leadership; Systems Thinking; Conflict Management; Leadership Style; Professionalism and Role Modeling; and Leadership Presence and Inspiring Others. Follow-up meetings will be held bimonthly.
The initiative is funded by a Nurse Support Program grant from the state of Maryland.
Johns Hopkins is represented in the Leadership Academy Consortium by Patricia Davidson, dean of the School of Nursing.
