Becoming a nurse faculty leader: doing your homework to minimize risk taking.

Risk taking is an important aspect of academic leadership; yet, how does taking risks shape leadership development, and what are the practices of risk taking in nurse faculty leaders? This interpretative phenomenological study examines the meaning and experience of risk taking among formal and informal nurse faculty leaders. The theme of doing your homework is generated through in-depth hermeneutic analysis of 14 interview texts and 2 focus group narratives. The practice of doing one's homework is captured in weighing costs and benefits, learning the context, and cultivating relationships.

Successes and challenges of a distant faculty model.

Purpose: The planning, implementation, and evaluation of a 2-year pilot project for a distant faculty model is presented through the reflections of the distant faculty member and other stakeholders. A school of nursing with a 15-year history of offering distance education graduate programs served as the setting for this project.

Conclusions: Overall, the distant faculty model was successful.

Faculty preparation: is clinical specialization a benefit or a deterrent to quality nursing education?

This article presents a point of view regarding the impact of specialty preparation at the master's level on performance as a faculty member in an entry-level program. Essentially, the focus in depth on a particular branch of nursing practice restricts the perception of the individual to the role and demands of the beginning generalist nurse. Continued attention to the development of expertise in the specialty reduces the effectiveness of the faculty member to develop a comprehensive view of the knowledge required by the beginning generalist nurse.

Nursing and academic mergers of the health sciences: a critique.

This article explores the current trend in which the discipline of nursing and other health sciences are merged within a single academic unit in higher education. To date little has been written in the professional literature about the institutions that have engaged in these types of "mergers," even though they appear to be increasing in occurrence. Since these realignments have the potential to affect the continuing development of academic nursing, attention from the nursing community is warranted.