Nursing Professors Kathy Parsons and Lisa Gonzalez Excel with Nurse Support Program; Recognized for Leadership

Ensuring that our region has top-quality nurses starts with ensuring that they’re taught by the best possible professors. College of Southern Maryland (CSM) nursing faculty are continually working to remain at the forefront of nursing education, and CSM nursing educators have recently been recognized by Maryland’s Nurse Support Program II (NSP II) for their commitment to leadership and learning.

CSM Nursing Professors Kathy Parsons and Lisa Gonzalez recently earned the Academic Nurse Educator Certification Award from the NSP II program. This award recognizes faculty who demonstrated excellence as an academic nurse educator through achieving and maintaining the National League for Nursing’s (NLN) Certified Nurse Educator (CNE) credential.

According to the NSP, achieving the CNE credential is an arduous process where faculty must provide evidence of scholarship in areas of teaching and inquiry in a way that communicates to students, peers and the academic and health care communities that the highest standards of excellence are being met.

The recognition comes with a $5,000 award and Gonzalez said that she plans to use hers to continue working toward her Ph.D. in Nursing Education, which she expects to complete in 2025.

“The PhD coursework and CNE certification have been instrumental in helping me learn how to effectively engage students, develop and align curriculum to facilitate student progression, and use research and scholarship to positively impact nursing education," she said.

Meanwhile, Parsons said that maintaining her CNE certification helps her to stay current on many topics and NLN core competencies that are important to my role and gives her strategies to facilitate learning in her classroom, simulation lab and clinical facilities.

“I love teaching at CSM,” Parsons continued. “This is where I got my start and was first inspired by dedicated nursing faculty. After functioning in many different roles in my nursing career, I returned to CSM in 2005 to teach in the RN program and hopefully be that dedicated and caring faculty member who inspires her nursing students.”