Carolina Nursing faculty awarded Dean’s Pilot Grant Funding
August 5, 2025
The UNC School of Nursing is excited to announce that eighteen of its faculty members have been awarded funding through the Research, Education, and Quality Improvement Pilot Grant.
This grant, which was created by Dean Howard in the spring of 2023, supports innovative research, educational scholarship and quality improvement projects that align with Carolina Nursing’s mission of advancing health for all and one of the following initiatives:
- Initiative 1 funds projects that enhance the competitiveness of research proposals submitted for external funding.
- Initiative 2 funds projects that support educational scholarship and research in alignment with the National League for Nursing Research Priorities in Nursing Education.
Initiative 1 awards were made to:
Dr. Jihye Kim Scroggins (PI), Dr. Alison Stuebe, and Dr. Saif Khairat, for “Using Natural Language Processing to Identify Symptoms of Substance Use Disorders from Clinical Notes Among Patients Admitted for Labor and Birth.”
Dr. Bharathi Zvara (PI), Dr. Cathi Propper, Dr. Becky Salomon, for “Behavioral and Physiological Response to Infant Distress in Pregnancy: A Feasibility Study Using Technologically Advanced Infant Simulators.”
Initiative 2 awards were made to:
Dr. Elizabeth Stone (PI), Dr. Brandi Apple, Dr. Nancy Jo Thompson, Dr. Jessica White, Dr. Elizabeth Baldwin, Dr. Krystal Pendergraft-Horne, and Dr. Jennifer Alderman, for “Simulating Success: Evaluating the Impact of Replacing 50% of N430 Clinical Hours with High-Quality Simulations on BSN Student Clinical Judgement.”
Dr. Rachel McInerney (PI) and Dr. Leslie Sharpe, for “AI-Powered Clinical Simulations: Utilizing GPTs and Avatars as Virtual Standardized Patients for Nurse Practitioner Competency Assessment.”
Dr. LaTonia Clark Chalmers, Dr. Rebecca Hill, Dr. Jessica White, Stephanie Guzman, Dr. Stephanie Fisher, Dr. Krystal Pendergraft-Horne, and Tiffany Bailey, for “Building SON Capacity for Disability Inclusion (Universal Accessibility) in Nursing Education.”
Awardees and their teams will carry out these pilot projects from May 1, 2025, through April 30, 2026, after which they will share their discoveries with a wider audience by disseminating findings in academic nursing journals and national conferences. The awardees will also present their project findings to the School of Nursing faculty and staff.
We would like to express our gratitude to the review committees for their invaluable contributions and expertise and congratulate all awardees on this outstanding achievement!
