Welcome to Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga as we use stories to connect the past to the present and then our future as we reimagine our teaching and learning. As we celebrate the NLN Year of the Nurse Educator we pay tribute to extraordinary nurses who've made significant contributions to nursing education. We dive into the stories of nurse educators who recognized a need, challenge traditional customs, and influenced transformative change. Welcome to part two as we honor Verle Waters - scholar, reformer, and champion of multiple pathways to professional nursing practice. Part one explored how Verle joined and led two revolutionary movements in
nursing education:
the pioneering and tumultuous days of the early ADN nursing education programs and the entry into practice debates in the 1970s and 80s. Part two will explore Verle's call to join the NLN Curriculum Revolution and to take her turn once again on the barricades of reform. In 1960 Verle moved to California to create the associate degree nursing program at San Jose City College. There she met a fellow faculty member Em Bevis, another curriculum reformer and a leader of the NLN Curriculum Revolution who is highlighted in this year's series of Saga. Throughout the lifelong friendship they shared a passion for curriculum reform. Verle described her entry into yet another revolution in her words: Verle encouraged ADN faculty to listen to ideas embraced by the revolution to catch the spirit of innovation championed by its leaders. Verle recognized that over the years, since the heady days of the new ADN programs in the 1950s, faculty had responded to backlash and criticism of ADN graduates from baccalaureate colleagues, by, in her words: Verle actively joined Em and others to embrace the revolutionary mantra to leverage an assault on rigid classroom protocols, lectures, and "covering content." She participated in the national discussions about enlarging the sense of community, incorporating new pedagogies, changing the relationship between teacher and student, and responding to a new and more diverse student population. She encouraged ADN faculty to return to their roots of transformation and innovation. Yet faculty felt the pressure of ensuring that the two-year programs were packed with content and radical change was sporadic; there were pockets of innovation, but sustained and far-reaching innovation never materialized. Yet, like any seasoned revolutionary, Verle persisted. She found ways to embrace the tenets of the Curriculum Revolution to foster engaged learning and reduce power structures between teacher, practitioner, and student. By this time Verle had moved to Ohlone College in Fremont, California as assistant dean of instruction for the health sciences, she witnessed a change in the education-service relationship, as faculty and their clinical partners identified the need to collaborate to ensure a competent nursing workforce. She determined to facilitate ways for faculty to capitalize on this growing partnership. Verle secured funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation to pilot a preceptorship program for senior nursing students. Today the senior preceptorship model is the norm in most collegiate nursing programs - a transformative educational practice that had its beginnings in the Curriculum Revolution movement. Nursing education owes a great debt to Verle Waters: innovator, champion of nursing education career pathways, leader of associate degree nursing education for half a century, tireless advocate of experimentation. Verle was a student of change and radical new beginnings. She fully recognized that to lead faculty into uncertainty she needed to be persuasive, not prescriptive. In her words: In 2007 she wrote an essay about her journey and left us with a final piece of advice. She urged faculty to welcome the opportunity to innovate and reframe educational practices, to be open to seemingly radical new ideas, and she added,"Never turn your back on a Revolution." And so the Saga continues and may our Saga continue as we bring to a close this episode of Nursing EDge Unscripted Saga. Thank you for joining us