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HCA Foundation Grant Funds Belmont Nursing Testing Initiative

The HCA Foundation has approved a $50,000 grant to Belmont University’s College of Health Sciences that will be used to enhance the ability of the Belmont and Tennessee State University Health Sciences faculties to improve their ability to evaluate student learning by enhancing student testing. The enhanced testing will mean nursing students at both universities will be better prepared for practice and for success on licensing and certification examinations.

The grant proposal was submitted by Dr. Debra Wollaber, dean of the Belmont University College of Health Sciences and School of Nursing; Dr. Kathleen McEnerney, Dean of the School of Allied Health Professions at TSU; Dr. Mary Ella Graham, Dean of the School of Nursing at TSU; assisted by Dr. David Greathouse, Associate Dean of Physical Therapy at Belmont, and Dr. Lorry Liotta Kleinfeld, Interim Associate Dean of Occupational Therapy at Belmont.

The grant proposal described how collaboration between a public historically black institution and a private, religiously affiliated institution will enhance two faculties’ ability to identify common issues in testing and analysis within, between, and among the disciplines.

The grant-funded project will seek to develop specific content related to testing and analysis needs to be taught. Having a collaborative arrangement that involves both universities will create an economy of scale such that students from both institutions have teachers with enhanced teaching skills.

The HCA Foundation funds the project in full.

Wollaber says the grant includes funding for a Critical Thinking and Item-Writing Workshop to be held Thursday, May 20, on the Belmont campus. The all-day event will be facilitated by Dr. Susan Morrison, a well known and respected health educator who has given numerous presentations to a variety of health sciences faculties across the country on critical thinking and item-writing.

As President and owner of Health Education Systems, Inc. (HESI) since 1990, Dr. Morrison has been responsible for developing, testing and marketing products used to better prepare nursing students for programmatic and licensure success.

The grant also includes support for Belmont and TSU to purchase equipment and software support necessary to implement computer-based testing, including seven computers to use as servers, eight scanners, and eight LXR Academic Bundles with sufficient licenses so that each faculty member will have access to the software.

"The timing of the workshop is such that faculty can begin to work and implement the LXR 6.0 system over the summer and incorporate it into testing in the next academic year," says Wollaber. "I also am hopeful that we might be able to begin to have some collaborative 'Testing and Analysis Sessions' between TSU and Belmont faculty over the next couple of years.

Posted by the Office of University Marketing & Communications, May 19, 2004

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