Tell me a fun fact about you.
I’m a research implementation manager here at the School of Nursing, and a fun fact about me is that for a few years, I’ve been a Kansas City barbecue judge.
You have to go a full-day training that teaches you not only about taste, but also appearance and rules about what can be in the box, the texture of meats, what the gold standards of BBQ are, and where you can use your judgment about personal taste.
You get to go around competitions and put your name in for judging.
It’s up to the judge where they want to go. We’ve just done a few Wisconsin competitions.
What has helped you to grow and develop your career here?
I was working here in a faculty support position while I was finishing my undergraduate degree in strategic communications. I decided to take a risk and take a path that didn’t relate to my degree, but I could use a lot of those skills.
I started the job here at the School of Nursing and have worked here for almost twenty years on health care research. It’s been an amazing journey that I do not regret one bit.
I have been able to travel broadly—everything from driving the backroads of rural Wisconsin to flying internationally to Italy and Australia—doing research data collection, outreach, and building my expertise. It is incredibly satisfying.
I’ve had real career growth opportunities along the way and can apply that in new ways, working with a variety of people here in the School.
Tell me about your position at the School of Nursing.
I’m in a unique position here at the School of Nursing. I’m a research implementation manager, which means that I help coach faculty, research staff, and students who are conducting research about how to manage their grants and how to conduct their research in a way that conforms to funder standards, compliance, and best practices in the research management community.
What do you enjoy about that work here?
One of the best parts about my job is that I get to connect with faculty, staff, and students.
I get to engage with everyone who comes in and out of the School of Nursing in some way. It keeps me really connected to both the research mission and our educational mission to grow graduate students into researchers.
I get to help people solve problems, which is really rewarding and satisfying for me. We want to remove the barriers to conducting research here in Wisconsin and beyond.
What’s your favorite insider tip?
People don’t realize that Cooper Hall has one of the best views of the lake here on campus. We have unique spaces. As an employee, you get to enjoy our rooftop garden. In the summer, it’s really beautiful. The UW marching band even serenades us when they are practicing in the fall.
What is something that you enjoy about the school community here?
I enjoy the respectful and collegial environment that we have here at the School of Nursing. We work hard, and we play a little bit, too.
We have a wellness committee that engages in several activities throughout the year. For example, there’s fun with board games where everybody can stop by to take a break to engage with colleagues.
There’s been things like painting activities or walking out to Picnic Point—doing activities that are healthy for our bodies and minds.
There are always a few celebrations every year where the Dean brings all of us together. We get to meet each other’s families and just enjoy interacting with each other.
“We all understand that our work is challenging, and we support and help each other solve problems. We give each other grace and understanding while working through those problems.”
I’ve enjoyed the ways we engage around food and community here at the School for the last twenty years. On each of the floors, there’s always something in one of the community kitchenettes, where you can grab a snack.
From the professional side, we all know that we work in an increasingly complex environment—both as a university and as a research-intensive school—and we support each other across units.
When I engage with other units here at the School of Nursing, such as Academic Affairs or Human Resources, we all understand that our work is challenging, and we support and help each other solve problems. We give each other grace and understanding while working through those problems.
How does your role contribute to the Wisconsin idea?
I interact with Wisconsin’s communities—from training CNAs to care for older adults to working with people with intellectual disability as they age and helping their care providers and family members support them.
We have worked with communities across Wisconsin to create coalitions to build more age-friendly communities.
In my new role as a research implementation manager, people have come to me with ideas about engaging with communities to help design research, to develop a process for a program, and to co-create implementation strategies.
Then, we can help them find grants that will support their work. We can also help them figure out the procedure and how to compensate people for their engagement on projects.
I’m happy that my work facilitates those types of connections and helps them solve problems and remove barriers.
How can someone help support the research here at the School?
There are opportunities to support things like outreach and programming in communities through financial contributions and volunteer support.
You can help share fliers and information that you see on social media or in your grocery store, for example. I recommend you follow the School of Nursing on social media, and you might see an opportunity to participate in a research study.
Engage in research and participate yourself. You can share that with your friends or encourage people to come to an educational offering that we might have in your area.
As we look forward to the next 100 years, what does the future of nursing look like, and how does your work at the School help transform the profession?
There are a lot of things on the horizon that are changing nursing research, how we do it, and the questions that we ask.
Artificial intelligence (AI) in health care is making more information available. We can explore where it can help us and where we may find more challenges because of AI.
How do we research using AI in an ethical manner? How do we still engage directly with people and test assumptions that may exist in the data?
It’s exciting to research in a time when there’s more information available to us than ever. That information can speed up the life-changing interventions developed for patients and health care, and for people just trying to live healthier.
It’s an exciting time to be a researcher and take all that information in new directions and try new things that will hopefully impact all of us as we age and try to live well.