SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Schola Matovu is a full time third year PhD student at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a staff nurse on a medical/surgical/oncology unit. Both personal and professional experiences have prepared Ms. Matovu for her current research interest in the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of grandparents caring for HIV/AIDS infected grandchildren in Uganda. For the past 14 years, she has derived great professional satisfaction in caring for older adults in nursing homes, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and in-home settings. In collaboration with regional and department leaders, Ms. Matovu continues to explore ways of improving the quality of care of patients through establishing a research committee in her clinical setting. In addition, she has worked at length as a research assistant on various studies. Ms. Matovu has continued to assume leadership responsibilities and membership to several UCSF campus committees and other professional organizations. She continues to gain expertise in international collaboration with organizations such as Nurse To Nurse Global Initiative (NTNGI), an organization that she co-founded to establish partnerships between UCSF and other schools of nursing, particularly in Uganda. Ms. Matovu’s future plans include continuing to advance her expertise in the research process; engage in national and international collaborations; pursue tenured professorship; assume leadership positions in professional organizations; and advocate for the advancement of the nursing profession.

Daniel McAlvin has been a practicing psychiatric NP for 5 years, and a psychiatric nurse for over 8 years, having graduated from Columbia University’s School of Nursing. His first nursing position was at New York Presbyterian’s inpatient psychiatric unit. Working in this intensive environment offered him years of hands-on experience in patient-focused care, safety, education, as well as exposure to motivated and knowledgeable talent from many disciplines. Born of this was a more cognizant and appreciative outlook not just towards his direct clinical contributions, but how health care systems — research, evidence-based practice, access and quality, awareness and literacy — function in their interdependent ways to constantly strive towards improvement in the face of multiple obstacles and challenges.

It was during this period that he was also pursuing his Masters of Nursing. This program afforded him further study of evidence-based practice as well as the opportunity to engage with multiple health care milieus. Witnessing the work non-profits do serving the underserved here in New York demonstrated to him the true immensity of long-standing health care challenges and the vigorous commitment individuals and organizations take to meet them head-on.

Upon starting his nurse practitioning career, he embarked at a non-profit mental health care center in midtown New York named St. Paul’s Center, which was founded by an alumnus of Columbia’s nursing program, and entirely composed of NP clinicians. St. Paul’s Center provided mental health treatment to the city’s homeless, at-risk-for-homelessness and teenagers ejected from their homes. In the course of his work there, he found himself on the front-lines of healthcare and social support disparities. It was a headlong education in strengths and limitations of healthcare and social service resources desperately needed for the underserved. The experience burnished within him an appreciation of the systemic challenges of our nation’s healthcare system and the need for socially-aware nurses to lead the charge to right them.

Since 2012, Daniel has been working at NYU’s student health center as a NP at its counseling service. It has been a unique privilege to work with a diverse young adult population faced with their own particular developmental circumstances and needs. Alongside a staff who demonstrate a real commitment to health care quality, safety, student satisfaction, public education and prevention, he has been engaged with multiple evidenced-based and quality improvement initiatives such as ADHD treatment guidelines, genetic testing, prevention of adverse medication reactions, dialectical-behavior therapy, patient-to-provider communication and staff education.

Daniel also is a clinical instructor at Columbia University’s School of Nursing, teaching new waves of psychiatric nurses in psychiatric assessment. In addition, he precepts graduate psychiatric NP students at NYU. He finds teaching immensely rewarding, and considers it a necessary contribution to the profession.

Daniel is now in his first year of pursuing a DNP degree at NYU’s College of Nursing. He hopes enhance his clinical, research and healthcare-systems knowledge, but also demonstrate to healthcare consumers and the public at large his commitment to being an active participant in providing quality healthcare, and to help lead change.

Education:

Columbia University School of Nursing, New York, NY
Masters of Nursing Science, Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program, October 2010
Bachelor of Nursing Science, May 2007
Cornell University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Ithaca, NY
Bachelor of Science in Biology, May 2005

Julie McCarron is a DNP student at Frontier Nursing University. She previously received a Post-Master’s Certificate in Nurse-Midwifery from Frontier and a BS in Nursing and MS in Community Health Nursing from University of Southern Maine. She currently works in a full scope midwifery practice including well baby checks and lactation consulting as an IBCLC at Homer Medical Center/South Peninsula Hospital in Homer, AK. She also provides services at Kachemak Bay Family Planning Clinic. She is a member of the Alaska Breastfeeding Coalition. She has been working with a local group on improving immunizations rates in the Homer area. She also has acted as a clinical preceptor for FNP students during their OB/GYN rotations and is a preceptor for a current Frontier CNEP student. She is interested in exploring health care disparities among Russian Old Believer Women and their infants/young children in the villages around Homer, AK. She wants to look at how health care is perceived and received within their cultural context with the goal of improving the delivery of health care and in turn the health of this population.

Carolyn McClerking is a US Army reserve veteran whose military career spanned a total of 20 years. In that time she served as both a Chemical Officer and Public Affairs Officer. Ms. McClerking obtained her Bachelor of Science (BS) in nursing in 1995 from Mississippi University for Women (MUW) in Columbus, MS. She also holds a BS in Broadcast Journalism from MUW. She subsequently obtained her Master of Science and Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) certification from The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI in 1999. Ms. McClerking has 19 years of experience in the nursing field, including general surgery, oncology, hematology and most recently bone marrow transplant. She is presently an ACNP in the area of Blood and Marrow Transplant at the Ohio State University Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, OH. In addition, she has a dual role as the Specialty Director for the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care NP program at The Ohio State University College of Nursing. Ms. McClerking is currently pursuing her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from The University of Alabama and has a research interest in the area of cardiovascular disease in minorities. She is also interested in evaluating the local and national media’s role in influencing dietary health modifications to improve cardiovascular health. She plans to focus her scholarly project on the impact of dietary modifications on the cardiovascular health of African American women veterans.