UNC Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education Project

Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education (EIN) is a national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports evaluations of interventions that expand teaching capacity or promote faculty recruitment and retention in schools of nursing. As one of seven EIN grantees, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing in collaboration with the UNC Institute on Aging is evaluating state-based support for service (SFS) programs (e.g. loan repayment and scholarship programs) targeted at improving the recruitment and retention of nurse faculty.  The evaluation of these programs has the potential to inform policy makers, nurse educators, professional associations and future students in nursing about the relative benefit of investing in these recruitment and retention strategies aimed specifically at faculty in nursing programs.

The UNC CH team will develop: 1) the documentation necessary to inform programmatic improvement for individual state-based support-for-service programs, 2) the documentation necessary to replicate the program designs that appear to have the most evidence of success, and 3) the evidence base regarding whether and to what extent SFS programs impact nurse faculty worklife, recruitment and retention. Program leaders of state-based support-for-service programs will receive reports on their own program.

Project Staff

Jennifer Craft Morgan, Evaluator and Project Director

Co-Investigators:

Marilyn H. Oermann, PhD, RN, FAAN, ANEF

Mary R. Lynn, PhD

Donald Pathman, MD, MPH

Thomas R. Konrad, PhD

Project Management:

Brandy Farrar, MA

Jennifer Curasi, Data Manager

Melissa Mann, Study Coordinator