ALBANY — Disa Seymour, a SUNY Plattsburgh assistant professor of nursing, was selected for the inaugural class of the SUNY Nursing Simulation Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year.
“I’m a full-time faculty member at SUNY Plattsburgh and back in mid-August our department chair forwarded an email that came from SUNY System and it was a call for applicants to apply for this fellowship. The intent was to select 11 Fellows from the 64 campuses across the state to collaborate on this project,” Seymour said.
It’s a key initiative aimed at further advancing SUNY nursing programs in adopting simulation-based education for students, State University of New York Chancellor John B. King Jr. stated in a press release.
The SUNY Nursing Simulation Fellowship will advance SUNY’s effort to prepare more nurses for New York State’s health care workforce – a major objective of Governor Kathy Hochul and SUNY, a press release stated.
The Fellowship was developed based on recommendations from the SUNY Future of Health Care Workforce Task Force, a group convened to guide SUNY in addressing the critical health care workforce shortage and the Governor’s goal of increasing the health care workforce in New York State by 20%.
Following the engagement with more than 125 experts across SUNY institutions as well as the healthcare industry, the Task Force identified four priority areas for short-term action and investment, including fully leveraging nursing simulation.
In May of 2023, Hochul signed legislation permitting nursing students to complete up to one-third of their clinical training through high-quality simulation experiences.
“By making it possible for nursing students to fulfill one-third of their clinical requirements through high-quality simulation, Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State legislature truly took a significant step forward in addressing the health care workforce shortage in New York State,” King said.
“The SUNY Nursing Simulation Fellowship will prepare more of our extraordinary faculty members to lead efforts on their own campuses and across SUNY to prepare more nurses in order to meet New York State’s health care needs.”
“I’ve been an educator since about 2016, and I really was inspired to apply because I wanted to really deepen my expertise in this field and bring more advanced simulation techniques back to SUNY Plattsburgh just because simulation is becoming just a big part of our education. Given that the bill was passed back in May of ‘23 to allow for one-third of clinical time to be used with simulation. We really wanted to give our students that experience at SUNY Plattsburgh. I really wanted to be able to collaboration with other campuses across the state to enhance that experience for our students and build some bridges,” Seymour said.
SUNY Board Trustee Eric Corngold said, “Across our system, SUNY has incredibly robust nursing programs, and this fellowship will ensure that these programs remain at the forefront of innovation and impact in educating the next generation of nurses. These fellows hold the unique power to influence SUNY’s nursing simulation programs for the better so our students are consistently prepared for the incredibly rewarding career ahead of them.”
The following SUNY faculty members were selected for the inaugural cohort of SUNY Nursing Simulation Fellowship:
– Amanda Adams, SUNY Upstate
– Susan Chory, SUNY Farmingdale
– Holly Farwell, SUNY Broome
– Kelly Foltz-Ramos, University at Buffalo
– Debra Giugliano, Stony Brook University
– Kady Hoistion, SUNY Jefferson
– Suzanne Lindau, SUNY Orange
– Ashley Molina, Corning Community College
– Disa Seymour, SUNY Plattsburgh
– Lori-Marie Sprague, SUNY Binghamton
– Carlene Williams, SUNY Suffolk
In addition to advancing their knowledge and skills in simulation education, Fellows will have the unique opportunity to shape the future of simulation-based learning across the SUNY system.
Through their expertise, they will contribute to the development of the SUNY Simulation Shared Resource Library, a central repository of nursing simulation resources that will benefit nursing programs system-wide. Fellows Kelly Foltz-Ramos from the University at Buffalo and Suzanne Lindau from SUNY Orange have been selected as Co-Conveners to help lead this important work.
Seymour found out in early October that she was selected for the Fellowship, which she is honored to receive and very, very excited.
“Because to be the only of the 11 chosen to represent a SUNY comprehensive is huge for our community,” she said.
“The other Fellows are all from much larger colleges over the state. But just to be able to represent our small comprehensive. SUNY is amazing and it’s just a huge opportunity. I did travel to Albany and got to meet Chancellor King and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Health & Hospital Affairs and Chief Hospital and Healthcare Operations Valerie Grey. It’s just very surreal to be involved in this project.”
The SUNY Simulation Shared Resource Library will include vetted simulation scenarios spanning various specialties, teaching strategies, simulation education best practices, and more. The library will enhance the quality and diversity of simulation experiences for nursing students while increasing faculty capacity to support simulation operations beyond scenario creation, such as simulation space management, technical operations, and running simulation labs with students.
“This is in collaboration with my current work. SUNY Plattsburgh really encourages us as faculty to engage in scholarship. We actually are given course release to do that. I’m given additional course release to work on this project. Not enthusiastically because I love to teach. I want to teach as much as I can, but I will be relieved of enough of my expected course load to be able to participate in this,” Seymour said.
The Fellows will have monthly virtual meetings because they are located statewide.
“We’re all going to the IMSH Conference (International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare) in Orlando in January,” she said.
“Then, there will be some more in-person meetings scheduled throughout the spring semester.”