November 30, 2007

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing Dean Doreen Harper, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N., has been elected to the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) Board of Directors.

The academy’s 10-member board oversees its financial management and provides direction for its strategic planning. Harper has been a Fellow in the AAN since 1994 and will serve on the board through 2009.

Harper said she is honored to have been chosen by her colleagues to help lead AAN for the next two years.

“The American Academy of Nursing has demonstrated its ability to impact and shape nursing and health care,” Harper said. “Our members are a select group of nurse leaders who have proven knowledge, translation and political skills for setting agendas to build nursing capacity world-wide and to improve health care for the people we serve. I look forward to serving on this board and addressing our challenging issues in nursing and health care.”

“I am pleased to welcome Drs. Gillis, Yoder-Wise, Harper, Salmon, and Zungolo as the newest members of the board of directors,” said AAN President Pamela Mitchell. “And, I look forward to working with the current board members. I am confident that with their respective experiences, insights and commitments we will continue to advance the mission of the academy and move the organization in a positive direction.”

Harper, who has been at UAB since November 2005, also is director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for International Nursing at UAB. Her professional career began as an instructor at the George Mason University Department of Nursing, where she rose to the rank of associate professor before joining the University of Maryland School of Nursing Baltimore County Campus.

She returned to George Mason and the George Washington University for 14 years, during which she directed the nurse practitioner program and also was the national coordinator for the W.K. Kellogg’s Initiative on Community Partnerships for Graduate Medical and Nursing Education. Before coming to UAB, she was dean of the Graduate School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Worcester.

Harper earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Cornell University, her master’s degree from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and her doctorate from the University of Maryland.

The American Academy of Nursing anticipates and tracks national and international trends in health care, while addressing resulting issues of health care knowledge and policy. The academy’s mission is to serve the public and nursing profession by advancing health policy and practice through the generation, synthesis and dissemination of nursing knowledge.