Assistant Nursing Professor Lorene Martin recently won one of Kent State University’s Summer Teaching Awards. Martin, who teaches at Kent State University at Salem, is spending the summer developing a student mentoring program known as "Students Helping Students: A Student Nurse Mentoring Program”
“Receiving this award is such an honor,” Martin says. “But more importantly, it’s giving me the time to develop a program I feel very passionate about and one that will have a positive effect on our students.”
Martin explained that a student mentoring program helps perpetuate the professional development role of nurses and will help graduates consider nursing education. Additionally, “I think this also gives students someone to lean on,” she says. “It gives them a role model.”
She also explained that National League for Nursing supports the use of mentoring at the faculty level and is currently calling for innovation in nursing education. “This is really new in research,” Martin says.
Martin’s proposal came about after observing the difficulties her students faced when transitioning from being a college student to a nursing student. A pilot program began this spring with eight upper-level students agreeing to mentor sophomore students in the pharmacology course. Although this particular pilot was in its early stages, verbal feedback from all students was positive.
Martin’s goal is to develop a student mentoring program with formalized instruction in concepts related to mentoring techniques along with effective tools for evaluation.
The summer Non-tenure track Teaching Development Award provides financial support for faculty on the Regional Campuses as they develop a project to promote excellence in teaching and learning. The award is for a ten-week project that is to be completed in Summer 2010. Awards are competitive, based on the strength of the proposal and the recommendations from the department/school and the home regional campus.
Lorene Martin is an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Kent State at Salem and will be working on her doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction beginning this fall. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s of science in nursing and is a certified registered adult nurse practitioner. Prior to her appointment with Kent State Salem she worked as both a staff nurse and clinical nurse in acute and long term care.