WCU Faculty Take Latest Training Right Into Classroom

Nurse educators are challenged daily by the complex issues surrounding healthcare training. Luckily, they get some help sometimes.

Thanks to the 2016 Contemporary Forums/Elsevier Faculty Development Conference in Las Vegas, West Coast University students and faculty already are reaping the benefits of attending workshops led by nationally renowned nurse educators.

“We utilize flipped classrooms a lot in Dental Hygiene at West Coast University and to come to a faculty development workshop that has an emphasis on that is excellent,“ WCU Associate Professor Frances Soderling said between conference sessions. “It’s just helped us to be able to incorporate some new ideas that we’ve picked up during the conference and take them back and start to incorporate them.”

“Plus there was clinical applications,” WCU Associate Professor Jo Anne Schram added. “Even though the focus was nursing, you can still take it into any healthcare profession and be able to utilize it.”

Soderling and Schram said other WCU faculty have talked about the valuable training they received at previous Contemporary Forums conferences. After two days of lectures and workshops, both now understood why their peers looked forward to attending the event each year.

“We both teach didactic classes and one of the things that I liked was they emphasized taking the clinic and bringing it into the didactic class — and I plan to be doing that with my class,” Soderling said.

Schram, who teaches Nutrition, Biochemistry and Dental Hygiene for Medically Compromised Patients was eager to share with her students one workshop’s focus on bridging the lab-to-clinic experience.

“It’ll be easy to take those clinical situations and bring them right into our classroom,” she said.


WCU provides career guidance and assistance but cannot guarantee employment. The views and opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or position of the school or of any instructor or student.