Faculty member wins grant to develop innovative teaching approaches
Angela Lepkowski, clinical assistant professor, won the competitive award from the Illinois Board of Education Nurse Educator Fellowship program
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A $10,000 award from the Illinois Board of Higher Education Nurse Educator Fellowship Program will allow clinical assistant professor Angela Lepkowski, DNP ’18, MS ’15, BSN ’09, RN, NCSN, PHNA-BC, to develop innovative teaching approaches at the UIC College of Nursing.
“What this award will allow me to do is to strengthen and improve my own teaching style and methods and bring that back to the classroom to enhance the learning experience of students,” she says.
Lepkowski, who currently teaches community health for BSN students and is also a faculty member in the School Nurse Certificate program, says she plans to use the funds to attend national conferences, as well as to design high-fidelity simulation experiences for students.
As the UIC College of Nursing prepares to unveil a $6 million expansion of its experiential learning and simulation laboratory, Lepkowski says the funding will help her to take advantage of the new space and provide students with compelling experiences related to community health.
“I’ll be able to create standardized simulation experiences that expose students to real world scenarios that they might not have access to during their clinical rotations,” Lepkowski says.
Lepkowski, who was named to the Illinois Nurses Foundation’s list of “40 under 40 emerging nurse leaders” in 2017, spent seven years as a staff nurse in the pediatric emergency room at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, then joined Chicago Public Schools as a certified school nurse in 2011.
She joined the UIC Nursing faculty in 2016. Academia called to her as a way to imbue students with enthusiasm for community health, which she calls “the foundation for good healthcare and good health maintenance.”
“I wanted to convey the same types of positive experiences I had as an undergraduate here at UIC, and ultimately as a graduate and DNP student,” she says. “I was inspired by the really great professors and really great instructors that I had. I wanted to perpetuate that same type of experience for new nurses entering the workforce.”