M. Katherine Hutchinson, an associate professor at New York University’s College of Nursing, has been named associate dean for graduate programs at the Boston College Connell School of Nursing.
Hutchinson, who also will be a tenured professor of nursing when she joins the University this summer, will guide all Connell School programs in graduate education and lead its expanding doctoral program. She succeeds CSON Associate Professor Patricia Tabloski, who stepped down as associate dean for graduate programs at the end of the academic year. Tabloski will return to the Connell School faculty after a one-year sabbatical.
Although the Connell School already has a strong doctoral program, Hutchinson says she expects the lessons she learned at NYU will help guide her work at Boston College. With funding so competitive, and research designs so complex, students need “the time, resources, rigorous coursework, and mentored training experiences” necessary to develop solid research skills, she says. “The most exciting aspect of this challenge, and it’s a challenge everywhere, is that at Boston College I believe that the provost, Dean Gennaro, and the Connell faculty share this belief.
“Boston College has produced many of the nursing profession’s most notable leaders,” Hutchinson adds. “It’s an exciting opportunity to be part of a school of that caliber.”
Hutchinson was a neonatal critical care nurse for 20 years and founding director of the University of Pennsylvania’s nursing undergraduate honors program before she moved to NYU in 2007, at a time when its College of Nursing was revamping its doctoral curriculum to emphasize rigorous coursework and research training.
She received a BSN from Michigan State University College of Nursing and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Delaware. She did post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing before joining the faculty there in 2001. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
Hutchinson’s research interests include adolescent and young adult risk behaviors, with a focus on parental influences of sexual risk behaviors and HIV prevention. Since 2005, she has been collaborating with researchers from the University of the West Indies on an NIH-sponsored project testing a family-based HIV risk-reduction intervention for adolescent girls and their mothers.
— Connell School of Nursing