Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
If you’re an outstanding student with an interest in becoming a nurse, Creighton College of Nursing Dean Jessica Clark wants you at Creighton.
She joined From the Mall recently and shared her vision for the college, and its approach to serving students as the college’s enrollment rises to record levels (it’s up 50% since 2024).
“We're getting the best students who want to be Creighton Bluejays because we give them so much opportunity and then they take it and run with it,” Clark said. “In other nursing schools, the curriculum sometimes is so prescriptive and rigorous that a lot of the times there's just no room for anything else. But Creighton says, ‘Oh yes. Oh yes, you can.’”
Student-athletes who have busy practice and game schedules to juggle? You’re in.
Potential-filled students who may require a little extra support to adjust to the challenges of college life? Yes!
Students who want to set aside time for a study abroad trip? You bet.
Inquisitive thinkers who are looking for experience on a research team? Of course!
“I really do think that anyone can be a nurse,” Clark said.
Listen to the full episode for more insight from Clark.
Below is a snippet of the conversation. The questions and answers have been edited for space and clarity.
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Do you think that students feel the College of Nursing’s momentum or recognize the excitement for the college?
I try to get in front of students a lot. That's one of my little niche areas. I bring a lot of energy. It's kind of scary sometimes. I had an evaluation once that said I was “terrifyingly enthusiastic.” And I thought, “Hmm, I like that.” I'm engaging as much as possible.
But it’s important (to communicate with students) because I don't want quality to suffer just because we are increasing the quantity.
The College of Nursing has a 92% retention rate from freshman to sophomore year. That's huge, when national averages are in the 60s. So, I talk to students all the time and I ask, “What can we do to help support you to get to the finish line?” We are making really great investments in tutoring and academic advising — and a lot of things that we're doing, those are all ideas that have been coming from students.
Creighton nurses certainly have a reputation for being prepared to succeed when they graduate. What kinds of investment has been made in technology and innovation to help students learn?
Aside from our traditional labs and our simulation labs at the CL and Rachel Werner Center for Health Sciences Education, we're dissipating anxiety before we put students into a clinical setting. They're also getting almost 1,000 hours of direct patient care. They’re getting a lot more hours and that's a true testament to our faculty and our clinical partners saying, "Please come as much as you need to."
When our students graduate, they have to pass the big test in the sky, the NCLEX-RN. We start training their brain from Day 1, so when they hit those nursing classes, we're really challenging them and teaching them the way of the NCLEX exam. We don't wait until senior year. We do it all the way through the program.
What else differentiates Creighton’s College of Nursing in terms of its approach to innovative teaching methods, perhaps in how you are incorporating artificial intelligence?
Lindsay Iverson and Melissa Taylor — they’re faculty who have been working interdisciplinarily with Dr. Steven Fernandes and our College of Arts and Sciences friends. They created a chatbot within different courses, if you will. Some of those courses that are a little bit more troublesome.
Think about pharmacology, or areas of practice that are hard to actually get experience in clinical. Think about having a really difficult conversation with a patient; maybe they're dying or maybe one of their loved ones have just died. Those are things that are hard to practice. Our faculty created an actual AI chatbot where students can practice those difficult conversations. They put a rubric together with it, and then students get immediate feedback.
So, when a faculty member isn't available or it's 2 o'clock in the morning and students are trying to quiz themselves on some antibiotics that they have to give the next day, this technology is enabling them to work on that skill outside of the classroom. It’s pretty unique.
We're not afraid of AI. We want to be leading that effort because we know our students are going to be using it in the workplace. That’s just one of those innovations that you can see the College of Nursing kind of saying, “We're grabbing it and we’re taking hold of it.”
This may be a separate thought from the AI discussion, but in the healthcare industry, something is always changing. Every week, every month, every year. You really have to stay on top of it all as an institution that is trying to educate the next generation of leaders in nursing.
Yes, and to be fair, technology has always changed quite frequently, but I've never seen as much disruption within higher education as I have with AI — because of how fast the technology has been integrated. That puts our faculty on their toes quickly to be able to pivot and to adapt. And that's what I love about my faculty. Anything that's thrown at them, literally, they grab it and they just go. They say, “We’ve got this. … Not only do we have this, but we're going to be first to do it or we're going to develop it ourselves.”
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