Faculty and staff awarded Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grants

A collage of six women, each smiling and facing the camera, arranged in two rows of three with blurred indoor backgrounds. — *Lena Brokob, MSN, RN, Becky Salomon, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC Maureen Baker, PhD, CNL, CHSE, Brittany Kenyon-Flatt, PhD, Cory Smith, and Jean Davison, DNP, RN, FNP-C*

The UNC School of Nursing is proud to announce that faculty and staff members have been awarded Lenovo Instructional Grants through the UNC Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE). These grants will support innovative projects aimed at enhancing the educational experience for nursing students through the use of technology.

Lena Brokob, MSN, RN, and Becky Salomon, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, were awarded a $7,500 Curricular Innovation award. In Fall 2023, Dr. Salomon successfully piloted the integration of generative AI into the PhD-level theory course in the School of Nursing. Building on that success, they proposed to extend this innovation into a faculty development program.

Their project goals are to develop and implement a scalable Faculty Development Program to support SON faculty across all degree programs in integrating generative AI into their teaching practices, to equip students across our diverse programs to proficiently use generative AI tools in their academic and future professional settings, and to assess the effectiveness of the Faculty Development Program and the subsequent AI course integration in improving faculty and student AI competency.

Maureen Baker, PhD, CNL, CHSE, Brittany Kenyon-Flatt, PhD, and Cory Smith were awarded a $500 Communities of Practice award with a focus on determining the best way to integrate AI into the SON.

Jean Davison, DNP, RN, FNP-C, and a team were awarded a $500 Communities of Practice award to learn how best to integrate AI into operations relating to the mobile health clinic.

The CFE Lenovo Instructional Innovation Grants program recognizes the growing influence of technology in higher education. It empowers faculty members to explore innovative and effective uses of digital and instructional technologies, with the aim of transforming the educational experience for students at Carolina. Instructors at UNC Chapel Hill are dedicated to leveraging technology to engage and educate students, promote collaboration and interdisciplinary work, and make teaching practices more impactful.