Sue Durham, Nursing, Assumes WAC Assistant Director Role

Long-time member of the WAC Committee, Susan Durham has been teaching at George Mason University in the undergraduate nursing program since 1991.  Her writing involvement at George Mason University began with her teaching and coordinating of the School of Nursing’s writing-intensive course, NURS 465 in 1995. 

Teaching writing has become one of Sue’s passions, and she has NURS 465 to reflect her commitment to undergraduate writing and the WAC philosophy.  As part of the course, she initiated the requirement of a best works portfolio.  Sue has been instrumental in helping her college meet the State Council for Higher Education mandate for writing assessment by organizing an annual faculty panel within Nursing.  This panel assesses three pieces of writing from a percentage of the students’ best works portfolios used for a program evaluation of student writing competency and on university writing assessment. 

Sue presented her portfolio successes at the Annual WAC Conference at Rice University in 2003. She has served on the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) committee for the past six years and also serves on the University Writing Assessment Group, on the Critical Thinking Task Force, and on the School of Nursing’s Program Evaluation Committee.

As faculty in Nursing, in addition to her work with the WI course, Sue teaches and coordinates the undergraduate senior nursing clinical practicum, teaches a course exploring concepts of health promotion and disease prevention across the lifespan and on the graduate level, and teaches the didactic practicum and seminar in nursing education. In 2005 she was awarded the University Teaching Excellence Award for the creative teaching methods she uses in her WI course and in other courses that she teaches.

Sue’s publications include the book chapters, “Teaching students in a home-care setting,” in Community-based Nursing Curriculum: A Faculty Guide, and “Community-based nursing practice in a home-care setting,” in Community-based Nursing Practice: Learning Through Students’ Stories. Forthcoming is the article “Implementing a New Faculty Workload Formula,” in Nursing Education Perspectives.