News Release: School of Nursing , Woodruff Health Sciences
May 5, 2009
Linda McCauley Takes Helm of Emory Nursing School
Linda A. McCauley, PhD, FAAN, RN. Download high-resolution image (2.2 MB).Linda A. McCauley, PhD, FAAN, RN, a renowned environmental health researcher and member of the Institute of Medicine, officially began her tenure as dean of Emory University's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing May 1.
McCauley was previously associate dean for research and the Nightingale Professor in Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is a national leader in the area of pesticide exposure and its impact on vulnerable populations, particularly children and migrant farm workers.
One of the items on McCauley's to-do list as the new dean of the Emory School of Nursing is to increase its PhD candidates.
"Students get mesmerized by clinical care," McCauley says. "Research is fascinating and rewarding too. I want to set a goal of enrolling two students each year to go from BSN into the doctorate program. But we need to educate students as freshmen and sophomores in college about nursing science. If we wait until they are juniors and seniors, their schedules have become so tight that they don't even want to think about staying in school longer."
In addition to boosting the number of nursing doctoral students, McCauley plans to recruit faculty, start new research programs with a focus on palliative care and mental health, expand the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing, and increase clinical placement opportunities and partnerships.
McCauley received a bachelor of nursing degree from the University of North Carolina, and in 1979 she received a masters in nursing from Emory. In 1988, she earned a doctorate degree in environmental health and epidemiology from the University of Cincinnati.
She is a member of the American Public Health Association, the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the Sigma Theta Tau Honorary Nursing Society, the American Nurses Association and the American Academy of Nursing.
McCauley also serves in an advisory capacity for the Institute of Medicine, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.
At Emory, McCauley will lead a team of nursing faculty members, whose research spans the globe and ranks in the top 20 of more than 700 U.S. collegiate schools of nursing and the top 10 among private institutions. The nursing school develops nursing leaders who are transforming health care through science, education, practice and policy worldwide.
The nursing school provides a dual degree option with the Rollins School of Public Health, allowing students to graduate with master's degrees in both nursing and public health. In this program, students can major in international nursing, a rare offering in the United States or around the world. The school's PhD program is focused on generating new knowledge to improve health and health care quality, with emphasis on research on bio-behavioral determinants of health, improving global health and enhancing health systems.
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