UC Nursing Professor Receives National Teaching Award

CINCINNATI—A University of Cincinnati College of Nursing faculty member has received national recognition for innovation and excellence in teaching from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).

Christine Colella, DNP, CS, CNP, associate professor and director of Nurse Practitioner programs, has received the AACN Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Award. The annual award is presented to a faculty member with more than five years of teaching experience in didactic or clinical settings at AACN member schools. The recipient is honored as a leader in the promotion and implementation of innovation in teaching and learning approaches in nursing education and for being a role model for creating and sustaining a culture in nursing education.

Colella devised two interactive case studies in 2011-12 for distance-learning students in her Differential Diagnosis course, part of the Nurse Practitioner program. After comparing outcomes between students who completed the case study versus those who worked with real patients, the pilot program was so successful that Colella then secured a $900,000 grant from Advanced Nursing Education Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to create 15 additional interactive case studies. Now in the third year of the grant, Colella and her team have created five pediatric, five adult and five geriatric cases that increase in difficulty from simple to complex as students work through them. 

"The innovations that Dr. Colella has implemented in both the on-campus and online learning environment are phenomenal,” said College of Nursing Dean Greer Glazer, PhD. "The passion she has for providing students with cutting-edge tools and experiences to ensure their success is what makes her stand out as a leading nurse educator at the national level.”

For Colella, who has been with the university since 1995 and taught online courses since 2009, the project was one more way to bring the full experience of the graduate course to distance-learning students, helping to better prepare them for their post-graduation positions. 

"Our distance-learning program is as rigorous as our on-site program, and we try to make distance students feel like a part of the college community,” Colella said. "We’ve been able to increase the ranks of nurse practitioners across the country in places where it’s not easy to reach an educational institution offering such programs in person. But teaching and learning are always at the center of what we do, no matter the technology.” 

Colella received her doctor of nursing practice and master’s of science in nursing degrees from UC and completed a post-master’s certificate program as an Adult Nurse Practitioner at Northern Kentucky University. In addition to being a faculty at the College of Nursing, Colella also works as a primary care nurse practitioner at the Lincoln Heights Health Center, a federally qualified health center serving the uninsured and under-insured.

The AACN represents more than 765 member schools of nursing at public and private universities nationwide. It works to establish quality standards for nursing education, assists schools in implementing those standards, influences the nursing profession to improve health care and promotes public support for professional nursing education, research and practice.