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Baltimore, Md. – Two University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) faculty members and six alumni have been selected as 2025 Fellows of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), recognizing their extraordinary contributions to improving health locally and globally. FAANs represent nursing’s most accomplished leaders in policy, research, administration, practice, and academia. The inductees will be recognized for their substantial and sustained impact on health and health care at the academy’s annual Health Policy Conference, Oct. 16 - 18 in Washington, D.C. The UMSON faculty inductees are Veronica Y. Amos, PhD, MS ’07, MS ’00, BSN ’99, CRNA, PHCNS-BC, FAANA, assistant professor and director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Nurse Anesthesia specialty; and Joan Carpenter, PhD, CRNP, ACHPN, FGSA, FPCN, associate professor. Six additional UMSON alumni join Amos and Carpenter among the more than 200 fellows who compose this year’s cohort: Kami Cooper, DNP, MS ’05, PMHNP-BC, CCWS, behavioral health and wellness chief, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Vicki Freedenberg, PhD ’13, BSN ’80, RN, electrophysiology nurse scientist, Children’s National Hospital and George Washington University School of Medicine; associate professor of pediatrics, George Washington University School of Medicine Young Ji Lee, PhD, MS ’09, RN, vice chair for administration and associate professor of nursing and medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing Jennifer Moon, DNP ’20, MPH, MSN, FNP-BC, chief nurse officer, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Helga Scharf-Bell, DNP ’16, FNP-BC, MSN, NHDP-BC, director, National Disaster Medical System; chief nursing officer, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Gee Su Yang, PhD ’17, RN, assistant professor, University of Connecticut School of Nursing As director of the DNP Nurse Anesthesia specialty, Amos is responsible for the specialty’s overall curricular leadership, for maintaining accreditation, and for students’ academic success. She joined UMSON in 2011 as an assistant professor and the assistant director of the specialty. She is a certified registered nurse anesthetist who specializes in anesthesia for HIV-positive patients. In 2021, she was inducted as inaugural Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology. In 2023, she received a four-year grant of nearly $200,000 from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration for Nurse Anesthetist Traineeships. The competitive grant provides federal funds for nurse anesthetist students to gain clinical experience in rural, underserved areas. Last year, she was selected to serve as the chair of the National Certification Examination Committee for 2024 - 25. The committee writes the questions for the certifying examination through the National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists. Carpenter serves as a health scientist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and practices as a nurse practitioner with Coastal Hospice and Palliative Care in Salisbury, Maryland, in addition to her role as faculty at UMSON since 2020. With more than two decades of experience, she is a nationally recognized expert in geriatric palliative care, particularly in post-acute and long-term care settings. Carpenter’s research focuses on implementing and evaluating non-pharmacologic palliative care interventions to improve quality of life, reduce symptom burden, and enhance decision-making for individuals with serious illness and their care partners. She has led and contributed to numerous federally funded projects, including initiatives to improve access to dementia palliative care in nursing homes and to elicit and respect care preferences for seriously ill veterans. Her work has significantly advanced the integration of evidence-based palliative care practices in nursing home settings, influencing both clinical care and policy. A member of the Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association since 2012, she received its Excellence In Research Award in 2024. She was named a Fellow in Palliative Care Nursing by the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association in 2018. In 2022, she was a recipient of the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators. Most recently, she was named a member of the 2025 Class of Fellows of the Gerontological Society of America. “We congratulate Drs. Amos and Carpenter on the honor of being named Fellows of the American Academy of Nursing,” said Yolanda Ogbolu, PhD ’11, MS ’05, BSN ’04, NNP, FNAP, FAAN, the Bill and Joanne Conway Dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing and professor. “It is a significant tribute to their commitment to excellence and their many contributions to the nursing profession. Dr. Amos’ dedication to innovation and academic rigor in the education of the next generation of nurse anesthetists and her leadership in promoting and advancing the specialty of nurse anesthesia is exemplary. Dr. Carpenter’s commitment to advancing the delivery of high-quality palliative care continues to enhance patient and family caregiver outcomes and is an important element in improving the availability of palliative care for individuals in nursing homes and those with dementia. We also congratulate our six distinguished alumni for this recognition of their leadership and many contributions to nursing research, education, and practice.” The newest fellows represent 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 12 countries. Their extensive expertise will enrich the thought leadership of the more than 3,200 FAANs who together advance the academy’s mission of improving health and achieving health equity by impacting policy through nursing leadership, innovation, and science. ### The University of Maryland School of Nursing, founded in 1889, is one of the oldest and largest nursing schools in the nation and is ranked among the top nursing schools nationwide. Enrolling nearly 2,100 students in its baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral programs, the School develops leaders who shape the profession of nursing and impact the health care environment.

There is a projected shortfall of more than 10 million health care workers by 2030. Navigating an aging workforce, an increased demand for services, and a high burnout rate in the field, nurses are facing a crisis, said Kathleen McGrow, DNP ’14, MS ’02, BSN ’86, RN, PMP, FHIMSS, FAAN, global chief nursing innovation officer at Microsoft. Enter artificial intelligence (AI). “AI can actually help us automate some of these manual tasks that we’ve been doing so we can really focus on the high-value tasks that our providers really need to focus on,” said McGrow, who gave the keynote address, “Empowering Nurses with Artificial Intelligence,” at the 34th Summer Institute in Nursing Informatics (SINI), which the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) hosted virtually July 17 - 18. SINI 2025, themed “Thriving in the Age of AI: Mastering Emerging Tech in Health Care,” brought together visionaries, informatics professionals, educators, and clinicians to explore the use of AI in nursing. “The Summer Institute has always been a place to expand one’s knowledge and learn about the latest developments in informatics. It is also a place to explore emerging challenges, and, very importantly, a place for you to connect with colleagues and future colleagues in informatics,” said Yolanda Ogbolu, PhD ’11, MS ’05, BSN ’04, NNP, FNAP, FAAN, the Bill and Joanne Conway Dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) and professor. “What makes this annual gathering really special is the timeliness of the issues that are always discussed. That is absolutely true for this year's conference. It explores the topic that is on all of our minds: How will we learn to thrive and master artificial intelligence and emerging technologies in our health care environment, nursing practice, and education?” Improving Patient Outcomes Eighty-four percent of health care executives believe AI is going to revolutionize how they get information, McGrow said. From accelerating drug discovery, clinical trials, and supply chain management to improving communication and the patient experience (81% of patients say they’re unsatisfied with their current health care experience, McGrow said), AI presents an opportunity to provide more personalized, efficient, and responsive care. “AI understands complex situations. It can do multiple-step tasks. It can help us complete end-to-end workflows,” McGrow explained. “So, this really is set up to reduce cognitive load for our clinicians and allow them to focus on higher-value activities and patient care.” AI is a combination of capabilities, natural language understanding, contextual memory, and advanced reasoning, she added. “That means that AI can really be a partner in health care, and it can help us navigate our information better. It can help us make better decisions and ultimately improve outcomes for the patients and the providers,” McGrow said. Reducing Cognitive Load Michael Hasselberg, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, a professor of psychiatry, clinical nursing, and data science at the University of Rochester (UR) in New York, provided insight into just how AI, and especially generative AI, can help reduce administrative burdens and increase focus on the human aspects of care. Hasselberg shared his involvement in experimenting with AI to help triage patient messages to physicians in medical portals. Each day, he said, physicians spend a significant amount of time going through patient messages; there are nurses whose jobs are dedicated to organizing these messages and deciding which can be handled by the front desk, which can be answered by the nursing staff, and which need to be responded to by a doctor, he added. And it’s no small number of messages. “Whether that be through email, whether that be through patient portal messages, whether that be through telehealth or SMS texting, we’ve done a really good job of creating that seamless connection, but to the detriment of our clinicians, who are getting burnt out by all of this coming into the inbox,” Hasselberg said. Over the last five years, he added, there’s been a 300% increase in patient portal messages. After multiple attempts using different iterations of AI, Hasselberg and his team have been able to use the technology to improve how quickly messages are triaged. “We have, across our primary care practice on any given day, around 1,600 patient messages that get sent in. And imagine we had an army of nurses trying to triage these messages. A nurse could get through maybe 50 messages a day,” he said. “We found that GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, a type of neural network-based language model that generates human-like text) could get through all of those messages in a day with no problem, at a cost of under $15.” The afternoon featured a closing panel discussing the topic “Leading the Next Wave: Ethical, Practical, and Strategic AI in Health Care.” The panel, moderated by assistant professors Ernest Opoku-Agyemang, PhD, MA, RN, and Cory Stephens, DNP, RN, NI-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, CNE, addressed critical topics such as ethical considerations in AI and health care, cybersecurity challenges and solutions, and practical applications and governance of AI in health systems. Stephens discussed UMSON’s new Nurse Support Program II-funded statewide program, AI in Maryland Higher Education, known as AIM-High, designed to strengthen Maryland nurse educators’ capacity to integrate AI into nursing education. “If you are a Maryland nurse educator interested in professional development and AI, please consider participating,” he said. AIM-High will establish a sustainable network for collaboration and resource sharing to foster continued innovation. Wrapping up the day with closing remarks, Cheryl Fisher, EdD, MSN, RN, associate professor and co-director of the  Master of Science in Nursing’s Nursing Informatics specialty and of the Nursing Informatics Certificate, said, “It’s been an incredible day of connections, insights, and inspirations.” Next year will mark SINI’s 35th anniversary, she noted, with a theme of “From Legacy to Leadership in a Time of Transformation in Nursing Practice.” More information will be available on the SINI webpage.

Baltimore, Md. – University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) PhD student Abaneh Ebangwese, Cert ’24, BSN ’15, RN, CCRN, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship, becoming the first UMSON student ever selected for the honor. The Fulbright is a scholarship granted by the U.S. Department of State that supports research, study, and teaching opportunities in more than 140 countries. As part of the 2025 - 26 Fulbright program, Ebangwese will travel in late December to Yaoundé, the capitol of Cameroon, where she will spend nine months conducting research to identify and analyze cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among adults there. In preparing her Fulbright application, she discovered that Cameroon’s most recent peer-reviewed data on CVD prevalence dates back to 2017. Her work will involve partnering with local health facilities and community stakeholders to collect survey and biometric data on health indicators such as blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, diet, physical activity, smoking, sleep, and body composition. She will also use statistical methods to examine how these risk factors occur individually and in clusters within this population. This will provide insight into patterns of CVD vulnerability in an under-researched region of Sub-Saharan Africa. Ebangwese’s family is originally from Cameroon; she is first-generation American. Her interest in CVD is reflected in her PhD dissertation, which examines CVD risk factors among U.S. long-term care workers, a group considered marginalized due to systemic challenges such as low wages, physically demanding work, limited access to health care, and high occupational stress.  While enrolled in the PhD program, Ebangwese also earned UMSON’s Global Health Certificate, designed to prepare health professionals for global health practice, education, and research.  Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided opportunities for more than 400,000 individuals of all backgrounds to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. They exchange ideas, foster people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. Notable Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel laureates, 93 Pulitzer Prize winners, 82 MacArthur Fellows, 44 heads of state or government, and thousands of leaders across sectors worldwide. ### The University of Maryland School of Nursing, founded in 1889, is one of the oldest and largest nursing schools in the nation and is ranked among the top nursing schools nationwide. Enrolling more than 2,000 students in its baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral programs, the School develops leaders who shape the profession of nursing and impact the health care environment.