On August 16, Stevenson University Online will proudly host a Nursing Residency Workshop for Master of Science in Nursing students completing their capstone course. At the event, students will have the opportunity to share their capstone projects with their peers, faculty, and practicum mentors. The Nursing Residency Workshop is held three times a year at the end of the fall, spring, and summer semesters. The purpose is to prepare students for their roles as nursing professionals.
At the conclusion of the graduate nursing program, students take a capstone course specific to their area of concentration: Nursing Leadership and Management, Nursing Education, or Population-Based Care Coordination. Students in this course complete a 135-hour practicum with a mentor from their area of focus. This summer, our students worked with a diverse group of organizations including Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, Sheppard Pratt Health Systems, Johns Hopkins Homecare Group, Baltimore County Department of Health and Human Services, and Howard County Public Schools. As part of their experience, students develop and complete a project of significance to their practicum site.
For Judith Feustle, Associate Dean of Nursing at Stevenson, one of her favorite parts of the Residency Workshop is getting to see all of the students in person. She says, “Since our Master of Science in Nursing program is online, it is really fun to meet our students in-person at the Nursing Residency Workshop. Students have the opportunity to share what they have learned and accomplished with their faculty and fellow students.” The Nursing Residency Workshop is a representation of all the hard work and dedication that our nursing students achieved during their graduate studies. Feustle comments, “I think it’s important, because the capstone course gives students the opportunity to pull together everything that they have learned in the total program. Students have a chance to see how all the courses in the program and in their particular concentration came together to get them to capstone.” Examples of oral presentations for the August 16 Workshop include: “False Sense of Safety: Impact of Vaping on Adolescent Health” and “Nurse Workplace Bullying: Its Effect on New Graduate Nurses.”
Feustle’s advice for students after graduation is to “never stop learning and never stop changing.” She enjoys seeing the life-changing effect that the graduate nursing program has had on her students. Feustle likes to ask her students to reflect on how they are different nurses from when they first began their MSN studies. She comments, “It’s really kind of interesting! They always tell you, ‘Before the program, I would have approached a problem like this, but now I approach a problem like that.’ You can tell that they are thinking differently. The students have gained a new perspective.”
Stevenson University Online’s Master’s in Nursing students gain the theoretical and analytical knowledge required to contribute to the nursing profession as educators, leaders, managers, or population-based care coordinators. Our graduates are professionals with specialized knowledge and skills that can be applied within a broad range of patient populations in a variety of patient settings.