DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty

2021

Regina Phillips, PhD, RN, CNE, assistant professor, has been named UMSON’s 2021 recipient of the DAISY faculty award. Her passion for nursing education was noted in the nomination submitted by one of her students in pathopharmacology: "Dr. Phillips has made an extraordinary impression on my first semester of the Clincical Nurse Leader program. She is extremely knowledgeable in pathopharmacology and demonstrates excellence every day. She serves as a role model by sharing her personal experience as a clinical nurse, her accessibility to students for best learning, and informative and entertaining lectures. The material in her class is far from easy, and yet she makes it interesting to always want to study first. Each week, she records videos for what to expect for the week, and I eagerly look forward to watching them each week. Dr. Phillips certainly deserves the DAISY award. She demonstrates excellence in and out of the classroom. It is evident she cares about each of her students on an individual basis, and it shows. It makes a large university feel like an intimate family. She demonstrates enthusiasm at 9 a.m. every Wednesday and Thursday for a total of five hours a week. If there is any opportunity for her to teach another course for the CNL curriculum, please consider her. She is enthusiastic, intelligent, kind, flexible, and cares very much for individual success of her students."

2020

Amanda Roesch, DNP, MPH, FNP-C, assistant professor, has been named UMSON’s 2020 recipient of the DAISY faculty award, marking only the second time that UMSON has bestowed the award. Roesch is passionate about educating the next generation of UMSON advanced practice nurses to provide compassionate care to diverse populations. She weaves her experiences caring for underserved populations both locally and internationally into her teaching strategies. She challenges students to broaden their perspectives with her curricular design. As an ally for the LGBTQ+ community, she is committed to ensuring her students have the knowledge and skills to provide affirming, inclusive care to this population, and she includes this in the courses she teaches.

Roesch has also collaborated with a community/public health nursing initiative to provide physical exams to children enrolled in Head Start programs. This affords her the opportunity not only to teach Family Nurse Practitioner students to care for the pediatric population, but also to provide culturally sensitive care to a diverse population.

Her passion and enthusiasm for teaching are evident in both didactic and clinical settings. Students describe her as knowledgeable, dedicated, hardworking, and passionate and her teaching style as creative, unique, interactive, and fun. As one student stated, “Dr. Roesch is a true asset to the entire school.”

As a colleague, Roesch elevates the bar as a team player. She is always willing to assist at any level to improve curriculum and has developed many case studies, OSCE encounters, redesign of rubrics, exams, and, perhaps her most significant contribution, the episodic tool designed for Advanced Health Assessment. Roesch is a true example of UMSON’s core values.

2018

At the Baltimore Graduation ceremony on Dec. 17, 2018, UMSON presented its first DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing Faculty posthumously to Debra L. Wiegand, PhD, RN, CCRN, CHPN, FAHA, FPCN, FAAN, former associate professor in the Department of Organizational Systems and Adult Health, who died in November.

With a clinical background in cardiac critical care nursing, Wiegand taught palliative care, end-of-life, and bioethics courses. Her research focused on improving care provided to families of patients with acute and chronic life-limiting illnesses, studying family-focused interventions to facilitate the physical and psychosocial adaptation of families both during the dying process and after their loved one’s death. Having led or participated in nearly 20 projects, Wiegand generated research that also illuminated ICU nurses’ experiences of providing care to individuals near death and their families and the toll such care takes on nurses. In addition to her positions in academia and clinical practice, she contributed to the field through her leadership in national and international organizations related to family nursing, hospice and palliative care, critical care, and heart disease.