FSU to add doctoral degrees in 'hot,' in-demand fields beginning fall 2023
During the Board of Governors' Wednesday meeting at the University of South Florida in Tampa, they also approved a research-based doctoral degree in nursing that FSU’s College of Nursing will introduce. While the college already offers a practice-based doctorate degree in nursing, the focus on research will be a first for the college.
“For years, we’ve had a focus on practitioner education, and we have not developed the kind of research infrastructure that we needed to have this program,” said James Whyte, a professor and Ph.D. program director at FSU's College of Nursing.
"But being in the state’s capital and being in north Florida where health disparities are such a big deal, this is something that was long overdue,” he added.
Students in the program will be trained to conduct research to improve the nursing practice and contribute scholarship to the field — specifically on health disparities across different populations, such as HIV/AIDS prevention in adult and underrepresented youth.
Upon obtaining the degree, graduates will also be qualified to teach in research-based and practice-based programs as a result of graduating with the degree.
In Florida, the job growth for nurse educators is anticipated to increase by about 23% over the next eight years with nearly 400 job openings every year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“More Ph.D. prepared nurse scientists can be nurse educators, so we will have more faculty available to train and expand our programs to provide more nurses for the state of Florida and nationally,” FSU College of Nursing Professor and Dean Jing Wang said.
Besides the degree that will be added, other initiatives of the College of Nursing are the recent hires of world-renowned research faculty members Lisa Hightow-Weidman and Kathryn Muessig, who both recently created the Institute on Digital Health and Innovation at the college to build a connection between digital innovation and health care.
The two digital health experts will also make contributions to the research-based doctoral program once it starts.
“Providing more efficient care and providing care for a larger number of patients requires new approaches and new knowledge for us to do it, and that’s what research can do,” Wang said.
The college expects to accept six students into the new degree program during the first year at a tuition rate of about $444 per credit hour for resident students and $1,075 per credit hour for nonresident students.
Two recently hired faculty members in the College of Nursing are wasting no time making their mark at Florida State University, expanding the college’s footprint through the creation of a new institute focused on the intersection of digital innovation, big data and health care.
Lisa Hightow-Weidman and Kathryn Muessig — esteemed digital health experts whom FSU hired from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — have created the Institute on Digital Health and Innovation.
The institute, part of the College of Nursing, will emphasize the use of digital tools in health education, messaging and treatment; inspire collaboration and innovation across the university and health care industry; and provide training for students and postdoctoral fellows through research.
Hightow-Weidman will serve as founding director and Muessig as founding associate director.
“This institute will bring together and foster collaborations across multiple diverse groups, including academic, community and industry stakeholders,” Hightow-Weidman said. “And what the institute can offer hopefully is to create an ecosystem to facilitate the advancement of rigorous, translational research focused on solving real-world needs of patients and that ultimately benefit health care systems and communities.”
The initiative corresponds with FSU’s growth in health care-related research and education programs. Florida State University has been building out its health research portfolio while pursuing partnerships with major health care entities throughout North Florida, including Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, HCA Florida and the Mayo Clinic.
The Institute on Digital Health and Innovation will play a major role in furthering those efforts while providing important training opportunities for students.
“There are some great researchers in the College of Nursing who have thought a lot about digital technologies and health education and how you use that to the benefit of patients,” Muessig said.
She noted one of her first conversations with Jing Wang, dean of the College of Nursing and said: “One of the things that I really appreciated hearing was her vision for training through research – hands-on experiential learning for students to complement what they’re doing in the classroom.”
Hightow-Weidman began her role as a distinguished and endowed McKenzie Professor in the College of Nursing in early October. Muessig will start her role as a College of Nursing professor on Dec. 1.
“Research at the Institute on Digital Health and Innovation will promote equitable care that uses novel digital solutions, fulfilling the College of Nursing’s mission to boldly tackle challenges in how health care workers deliver the best care to patients,” Wang said. “This initiative will also provide more training opportunities for students and will foster collaboration and innovation across campus to impact the entire health care ecosystem in Florida, nationally and globally.”
Wang also noted the college’s focus on technology to enhance the use of human touch – she calls it the “high human touch” – and increase nurses’ time at patients’ beside.
“One health equity emphasis of the digital health approach we anchored here at FSU is the tech-empowered high human touch approach to engage not only the wealthy who desire advanced technology, but also those who lack access to or prefer the high human touch over tech solutions,” she said. “This can particularly benefit the ever-increasing retiree/aging population in the state of Florida.”
She called the approach “our guiding principle and our lens leveraging digital health solutions.”
Hightow-Weidman is an internationally renowned expert in the development, implementation and evaluation of digital health interventions to address the HIV Care Continuum for adolescents and young adults. She has been at the forefront of translating evidence-based science into digital applications, specifically through the inclusion of game-based elements, self-monitoring and tracking and provision of support to increase engagement and impact health behavior.
Muessig has focused on prevention and care of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in the U.S., China and South Africa. She develops interventions combining digital health tools, behavior-change strategies and health systems navigation to decrease HIV transmission and improve health care for people living with HIV.
Together, they have garnered over $100 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They aim to quickly build on that, including for the Institute on Digital Health and Innovation.
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