Forty-one students to represent first Doctor of Nursing Practice graduating class

When students line up to proceed for this week’s commencement ceremony at Waynesburg University, 41 individuals will be part of a first in University history. These 41 individuals are members of the first class of Doctor of Nursing Practice graduates, some of which completed their degrees in December while the others finished this semester.

Implemented in January 2007 as one of the first 25 DNP programs in the country, Waynesburg University’s program will come full circle Sunday, May 16, when these students graduate at the University’s annual commencement exercises.

Among those is Wanda Miller, a working adult who commuted from Richmond, Virginia. When she first heard about Waynesburg University, Miller was two years into a Ph.D. program. She had been taking doctoral classes part time and working as the Nursing Director for the Pauley Heart Center and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System. She had no intentions of that changing until one October evening when she was on the phone with a friend in Pittsburgh who was telling her about a new Doctor of Nursing Practice program at a school near her.

“She had just enrolled and told me, ‘You really ought to check this out,’” Miller said.

So she did. Miller went onto the University's Web site that night and by the next week had set up an application interview with Waynesburg.

“[The other program] had been absolutely wonderful about trying to make the program work for me,” she said. “It's difficult in a traditional program to have the kind of job I have and do that type of program — not because of the difficulty of the work. The problem was trying to leave my job to go to class and pick back up when I came back.”

That left her feeling like she wasn't able to devote sufficient focus to either work or school.

“Having been in both programs, I can say that the way the Waynesburg program was structured allowed me to complete the degree and feel like I was accomplishing both tasks,” she said.

Waynesburg's DNP program was not only geared specifically for working adults — like all the graduate programs at the University — it also focused on leadership skills and emphasized system-level change. Her previous program, like many other doctoral degrees in nursing, was primarily research based.

“For those of us who have been nurses for a very long while — let's just say I don’t think I ever thought I’d have a program of research,” she said. “Some DNP programs are very clinical focused. The Waynesburg program was really focused on executive leadership and education, which are the two things my whole career has been centered around.”

In the cohort model, Miller and her classmates met at Waynesburg's North Hills Center every month for classroom discussion, while working online and out of class the rest of the month. That approach was far more palatable than trying to fit class into the middle of her work day.

“That weekend advantage is a huge selling factor for people trying to work full time and committed to advancing their education,” Miller said.

Another benefit of her switch to Waynesburg, Miller said, was she stayed with the same classmates throughout the three-year program. In fact, after the friend she stayed with in Pittsburgh moved back to Virginia, she passed on switching cohorts to attend classes at another of Waynesburg's adult centers a shorter drive from home.

“It would’ve been much easier for me to [change locations], but I absolutely loved every single classmate I had in my cohort,” she said. “[Changing] would’ve cut off two hours of travel time but because of those relationships and because I felt so highly of my classmates, it was easy to say, ‘Nope, I’d rather stay with my class.’”

In fact, the number of students coming in from outside the area led the cohort to suggest changing from meeting one day every month to meeting a full weekend every other month. It was just one of many suggestions the first DNP group made to improve the program.

“I can’t say enough about the faculty. I think they tried to be receptive to students and our cohort being the first [in the new program]. We felt very strongly that our role was to provide feedback to make change to positively influence the program for the groups coming behind us,” Miller said.

And after years of working full time and going to school, Miller said things haven't slowed down much now that she's done with her DNP.

“It's been like that with every degree [I've earned]. You stay so busy and you think you’re going to have a breather when you're done, but something else just takes its place,” she said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a calm life.”

Founded in 1849 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Waynesburg University is located on a traditional campus in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, with three adult centers located in the Pittsburgh region. The University is a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and is one of only 27 Bonner Scholar schools in the country, offering local, regional and international opportunities to touch the lives of others through service.

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Released May 13, 2010 
Contact: Pam Cunningham, Assistant Director of University Relations
724.852.3384 or pcunning@waynesburg.edu