Nursing Education Research Conference
The focus of the 2025 Nursing Education Research Conference (NERC) is to unravel the multidimensional complexities of higher education and healthcare through highlighting research in nursing education that transforms our pedagogical practices.
NERC aims to empower participants with the knowledge, data, skills, and networks needed to drive positive transformations in nursing education with the goal to achieve health equity. This will be accomplished by touching upon policies, research, social justice, and teaching practices, to influence systems and sustain change.
Participants will:
- delve into implementation science to anticipate the future of nursing education and leverage technology and evolving evidence-based pedagogical approaches to prepare the future workforce.
- acquire strategies to effectively navigate and shape educational policy to create a teaching/learning environment informed by data.
- explore robust research designs.
- experience mentorship with a body of diverse nurse scientists who advance the revolutionary changes that are essential to preparing the next generation of nurses.
NERC 2025 Program Outcomes
- Leverage opportunities for participants to network with peers, experts, and leaders of research in nursing education.
- Empower participants to actively shape nursing education policies and practices based on data.
- Implement learning science into teaching practice with a focus on innovative teaching/learning methodologies, technological integrations, and evolving approaches.
- Learn how nurse educators can embed evidence-informed principles into their teaching practices that foster the development of social justice advocates for health equity.
- Use robust designs to generate, translate, and disseminate evidence for teaching practice.
Tracks
Follow the NLN Research Priorities (2024-2027)
- Build the science of nursing education.
- Build a diverse nurse faculty capacity and enhance teaching practice.
- Create teaching & learning environments that enhance DEI for student learning and progression.
Opening Plenary
Navigating Nursing Education in a VUCA World: Embracing Change, Policy, and Research
In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, we are currently facing numerous challenges in a world characterized as being volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). The same is true for nursing education as it responds to changes in health care, issues in higher education, nursing workforce shortages, and outcomes of a global pandemic. This presentation will provide insights, strategies, and examples to guide nurse educators in navigating the negative aspects of VUCA to achieve positive results where volatility becomes visionary; uncertainty results in understanding; complexity leads to clarity; and ambiguity results in agility by embracing change, policy, and research.
Speaker: Dr. Linda Scott, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FNAP, FAAN
Dr. Linda Scott is Dean and Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Nursing, a role she has served in since 2016, where she provides direction and leadership in educating nurses for the future of care, strengthening the school’s research enterprise, and forging partnerships to improve health outcomes. As a skilled nurse scientist, Dr. Scott’s research findings have directly influenced policy and practice related to patient safety and the nurse work environment. Her research, which has been widely cited and disseminated, focuses on the impact and association between nurse fatigue and adverse patient outcomes and effects, ultimately informing state and national policy recommendations and measures to help safeguard the public’s well-being.
Dr. Scott is a Fellow (2008) and current President of the American Academy of Nursing (2023). She is also a Fellow in National Academies of Practice (2020); a past board member for the International Network for Doctoral Education in Nursing, and past associate editor for Nursing Outlook, the official journal of the American Academy of Nursing. In June 2022, Dr. Scott accepted a nomination to become a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board of Health Care Services.
Dr. Scott earned her PhD in nursing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, her master’s degree from Grand Valley State in Allendale, Michigan, and her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in East Lansing. She was honored with Grand Valley State’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013. In 2020, Dr. Scott received the American Association of Critical Care Nurses Pioneering Spirit Award for her significant contributions to addressing issues facing acute and critical care nursing practice.
NLN Marilyn H. Oermann Award for Distinguished Research in Nursing Education
Nominee must be a current member of the NLN (current members of the awards committee, NLN staff, and the Board of Governors excluded) and must agree to attend NERC to receive the award and give a brief presentation at the closing plenary.
