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In management, we need to understand the nuances and impact of globalization, particularly the global economy and global political issues and their implications on our own economic and political well-being. What’s happening outside U.S. borders and what it might mean to us as a society is not getting as much attention as it should.  Standards do not equal standardization. Standardization takes away from dealing with learners as individuals. We are not focusing on learning—on the social, emotional, and academic needs that learners have. Only the things that are measured/measurable are deemed important. It’s not “How can we explore, discover, understand?” but “How can we test?”
Master’s degrees are becoming at least a must for future professional growth in the business sector. And in the academic world, forget about it if you don’t have a Ph.D. The other thing that’s required right now is a greater emphasis on cross-cultural understanding and foreign-language proficiency. You cannot succeed in the global economy without having an adequate understanding of other cultures, and the window to other cultures is their language. Education is all about relationships—interpersonal relationships, cognitive relationships. Being a successful educator takes time, takes connecting to people, takes learning about people.
I try to communicate that getting degrees is one thing—it is important—but at the same time there is a more important aspect of education, which is gaining knowledge and developing the right perspectives and attitudes in the context of our fastchanging world. If I can give them something that would stay with them for the rest of their lives, it’s that learning can be both fun and a lifelong rewarding experience.  I’m trying to help them see that “research” in itself is not scary—it’s actually fun. Learning and discovering new things—and being as clear and concise and open as possible to understanding—is what life’s all about, and research is something that they do in different ways every day. They just have to learn how to translate their understandings into the way research is defined in formal academic settings. 

The Extraordinary Faculty Award is conferred annually on Walden University faculty members who demonstrate the university’s core values of quality, integrity, and student-centered instruction. In 2008, Walden chose four faculty members for the recognition. We asked each of the recipients the same three questions, relative to their own experience and areas of expertise. Here, they share their answers. —Deirdre Schwiesow

 

 
  We’re not talking enough about educational level for entry to practice—about how one becomes a nurse. There are thousands of programs that educate nurses, but research has demonstrated that patient outcomes are improved when they are cared for by nurses who have bachelor’s degrees. If entry-level nursing required a bachelor’s degree, that would solve the whole problem. Nurses have become the least-educated members of the health care team.  In psychology, people are not looking enough at the environmental determinants of behavior; they’re trying too much to look for genetic determinants of behavior. But even if there is a genetic factor, we don’t have control over that.
It depends on the definition of success. Is success being a happy nurse and giving good care? Is it moving up the career ladder? I think education is part of becoming successful, but what’s also important is the ability to do whatever is necessary for the nurse to sustain the caring and compassion that brought her or him into the field in the first place. Hard work—it’s always hard work. To succeed, you have to put the time in, put the effort in to try to understand what the research is telling you. And you have to have the passion to do that. A lot of times, psychologists practice based on what makes sense to them, as opposed to what the research says works. They don’t make the effort to adequately evaluate the research. You need to know what is empirically validated. And just because something is empirically validated, that doesn’t mean it works for everybody.
I believe the most important element of teaching is the personal connection between teacher and learner. That relationship validates students’ hopes, alleviates their fears, accommodates their life commitments, and allows them to know they can succeed—that’s what I hope to provide. I want them to take away the knowledge that I care.  In the movie The Paper Chase, the law professor says to his students, “You will teach yourselves the law. I will teach you to think like a lawyer.” I want my students to think like psychologists. I try to teach critical-thinking skills. Most people take things at face value—I like people to think as objective scientists. 


 

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