Susan R. Lacey, RN, PhD, FAAN is a Professor and Kitty DeGree Eminent Scholars Endowed Chair of Nursing at the University of Louisiana Monroe. Dr. Lacey currently has a USDA grant to improve hypertension outcomes in rural Northeast Louisiana and a Blue Cross Blue Shield grant that will train lay Community Health Workers to screen residents for hypertension, diabetes, and cancer. Dr. Lacey’s has developed and tested instruments to measure work environments and information systems. She also has advanced expertise in measurement as evidenced by the invitation to serve on the Medicaid/National Quality Forum measures panel. Her Robert Wood Johnson and Northwest Foundations’ grant, Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy leadership and quality program for staff nurses, saw over $10 million savings, preventing avoidable hospital errors in the 16-month period. The program was adopted by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses with Dr. Lacey serving as the national director. In five years, the total savings was $30 million. Dr. Lacey was named as an Edge Runner, by the American Academy of Nursing in 2013 to signify this innovative and efficacious program. She is a member of the Academy, one of only 2600 nurses world-wide. She has over 50 publications, nine book chapters, and serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of Nursing Care Quality and Journal of Nursing Administration She holds a patent for a clinical decision-making software.

Dr. David Sharp has taught at baccalaureate, masters and at PhD/DNP level using traditional, online and mixed methods of teaching to full time and part-time students. He is a regular presenter at national and international nursing conferences throughout the USA and Europe and has also presented papers in Turkey and China. He writes and presents on topics in psychiatric nursing, nursing education, nursing research methodology and palliative care. He obtained grant funding from the European Parliament to fund two international conferences for nursing students and faculty. He has served on the scientific committees for several national and international nursing conferences.

Dr. Nashat Abualhaija, PhD, RN is an associate professor of Nursing at the University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB). He received his B.S.N from UAB in 1997, MSN from the University of Phoenix in 2005 and PhD from Barry University in 2017. His work experience include acute care nursing and nursing leadership. Dr. Abualhaija’ s research foci are vulnerable population’s health, cultural competence among healthcare professionals, leaders and systems, cultural competence among nursing students and faculty and student-centeredness and active learning approaches in nursing. Dr. Abualhaija serves as chair for the Assessment & Evaluation Committee and a member in the (Curriculum Development Committee, Faculty Senate, Research Advisory Committee and General Education Oversight Committee) at UTPB.