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Teaching students how to think isn't a vague, feel-good aspiration. It's a specific instructional shift, and it looks different depending on where your students sit developmentally.

If you've ever caught yourself grading discussion posts while only half-reading them, you're not a bad teacher. You're likely a busy one and feeling a little trapped working within a format that is often built for compliance instead of thinking. The good news is that discussion boards can actually do what they're supposed to do without eating your grading time or turning into a box-checking exercise for anyone involved.

You've pulled your item analysis report. You've found the question that students have already email you about and you stare at the ugly discrimination score. But no one ever taught you how to decide to actually do about it. Once you know what the numbers mean, the real skill is knowing what to do with them.

As fall semester ramps up and planning for next year creeps onto the calendar, I want to talk about a skill that gets far less attention in faculty development than time management or productivity hacks: the skill of doing less, on purpose. At the very least, I hope this post provides a new point of view you may not have considered. Maybe it will give you some permission to explore the idea that doing less can still be enough.

Course alignment in nursing education means intentionally connecting what students are expected to learn, what faculty teach and provide opportunities to practice, and how student learning is assessed. When those connections are intentional, faculty can make more informed decisions about content, learning activities, and assessments. Students are also more likely to understand why they are learning particular concepts and how those concepts contribute to their development as

In this post I have three full examples across different levels of nursing education so you can see nursing case study design in action. I want this to feel like a tangible recipe to follow so that you can walk away feeling ready to create.

The concentration names vary, but the underlying assumption that a DNP degree, dressed up with the right electives, is the terminal degree you need to become the best prepared nursing faculty. I want to gently push back on that assumption. Not because the DNP isn't valuable (because it absolutely is!), and if you already have one, you can absolutely pursue a position as a nursing faculty. But because the conversation around terminal degrees for aspiring educators has gotten m

Here's how to craft rubrics for nursing faculty that hold up to student appeals, to accreditation site visits, and to your own sense of "did I grade this fairly?"

Whether you're writing lesson-level objectives for a single module, building out a course from scratch, or sitting on a curriculum committee reviewing program outcomes, learning objectives at every level can be more than accreditation requirements. When they're written well, they're one of the most powerful tools a faculty member has. Let's talk about how to write learning objectives for nursing courses that actually drive clinical thinking.

Boundaries aren't the opposite of good teaching. They're what make good teaching sustainable. And setting them doesn't make you a less caring NP educator. It makes you one who's still standing at the end of the semester and wants to get ready for the next one. Let's talk about how to hold the line with warmth, clarity, and zero guilt.

If you're applying for a nursing faculty job, your CV is doing more work than you think. It's not just a list of where you've been. It's the first bit of evidence that a hiring committee sees that you understand what the role actually requires. Formatting choices, section order, and what you choose to highlight all signal whether you're thinking like a clinician or thinking like an educator. Let's work on that, section by section.

This post is specifically for APRNs who are maintaining a clinical practice and a faculty role simultaneously. Whether you're adjunct faculty teaching one clinical course, a full-time faculty member maintaining a part-time clinical practice, or somewhere in between, this one is for you.

There is simultaneously a documented nursing faculty shortage and a competitive job market for faculty positions. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and understanding why they coexist is the first step to navigating the search more strategically.

Content overload is one of the most common challenges in nursing education, and it doesn't discriminate. It shows up in courses and program across all nursing levels and in all course formats. It plagues first-year adjuncts and seasoned full-time faculty alike. The concern with content overload is that it's costing your students cognitively, emotionally, and academically. The good news? You can teach well with less. Let's talk about how to get there.

AI tools have gotten very good at helping with the kind of work that used to eat up entire evenings and weekends working on DNP projects. Not the thinking part (that still belongs to you and your student) but the organizing, the formatting, the synthesizing, and the tracking. This post breaks down which AI tools are actually worth your time for DNP project work, whether you're a faculty advisor or to share with a student.

There is a moment (and maybe you've already had it) where you're sitting across from a student who finally gets it. The clinical reasoning clicks. The hesitation lifts. You watch something shift in them, and you think: I had a small part in that. That moment is not incidental to your work. It is your work. That feeling, that moment is powerful beyond what most days in the trenches of grading, curriculum committees, and course revisions will let you feel. Summer has a way of s

The email arrives in your inbox explaining your first faculty evaluation is coming up. It might be described as a peer review of your teaching, an annual performance review, or the beginning of your tenure review process. This post will walk you through what typically goes into a faculty evaluation, what the reviewers are actually looking for, and how to write about yourself honestly without feeling like you're either bragging or throwing yourself under the bus.

The semester is over — and if you're already building a summer to-do list, this is your sign to pause. NP faculty are wired to keep moving, but sprinting straight from finals into a packed development agenda isn't growth. It's just working under a different label. This summer, try a different approach: rest first, then grow. Your fall students — and your future self — will thank you.

A 2022 article published in Medical Education Online titled "When Students' Words Hurt: 12 Tips for Helping Faculty Receive and Respond Constructively to Student Evaluations of Teaching" by Cornes and colleagues offers evidence-based guidance for exactly this moment. I'm breaking down their key recommendations here through the lens of NP faculty life, because this research is too good not to keep sharing.

My qualitative study on academic nurse leader (ANL) role development was published in Nursing Education Perspectives. I interviewed 18 nurse leaders across the country — program directors, chairpersons, assistant and associate deans, and deans — to understand how they actually developed in their roles. What I found was equal parts validating and sobering. Here are five strategies drawn directly from the findings of this study.