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Dr. Nicola Pitchford Named Dominican University of California’s 10th President
Dr. Nicola Pitchford, a professor of English whose research and teaching interests include contemporary British literature, feminist theory, race and national identity, and landscape writing, has been named President of Dominican University of California. Her term begins on July 1, 2021. Pitchford has served in both academic and administrative roles in higher education for more than 25 years. She joined Dominican in 2011, serving first as dean of the School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (now the School of Liberal Arts and Education) and, since 2014, as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. In 2018 she stepped in as Dominican’s interim president while President Mary B. Marcy completed a research sabbatical. “Dr. Pitchford’s record is outstanding in all arenas — academic, administrative, and creative,” said Dr. Carolyn Klebanoff, chair of Dominican’s board of trustees. “Through the evaluation process, it became clear that she enjoys the enormous, and critical, respect of her campus colleagues.” Pitchford’s immediate focus will be the continuation of work that began under President Marcy’s leadership to fully develop a distinctive model of academic programming and student support, which today is nationally recognized as the Dominican Experience. She served on the original design team to establish this signature student learning experience, developed over the past decade, focusing on maximizing Dominican’s strengths and fostering equity. In 2014, Pitchford co-chaired the Dominican Experience Task Force, composed of nearly 30 faculty and staff. Its charge was to align and expand Dominican’s academic and co-curricular strengths within engaged learning principles. In recent years, Pitchford has joined President Marcy in raising the profile of the Dominican Experience by presenting successful outcomes at national conferences and addressing prospective students, alumni and local organizations. Today, the Dominican Experience places the University among a small group of institutions transformed around a clear vision of hands-on learning, personalized mentoring and community engagement. “I will continue the outstanding work that has been accomplished under President Marcy’s tenure to focus on what I believe is the core task of higher education in a changing world: the education of the whole person,” Pitchford said, “nurturing habits of critical thinking and flexible intelligence that equip our students to engage ethically and carefully with others and to adapt their skills to both existing and emerging community challenges and career opportunities.” Pitchford has also helped shape the University’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and developed campus-wide priorities as a member of the faculty-staff-student Diversity Action Group (DAG). Recently, she participated in a year-long listening and planning project with DAG and the Associated Students of Dominican University (ASDU) to support the student experience in three primary ways: programming, education and advocacy. This work led to the drafting by DAG of a campus-wide Strategic Diversity Plan and the appointment of a student-facing director of diversity, equity and inclusion to lead the campus community in implementing the plan. Dominican’s 10th president has a background as diverse and compelling as the University she has helped shape for the past decade. She has worked as a pastry chef, played bass and flute in an experimental rock band, and her varied research interests include the history of the Booker Prize. After graduating cum laude from Pomona College with a bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing, Pitchford initially planned a career in social work. However, she ended up working as a professional baker and then in political and community organizing. She went on to earn both a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in English, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary U.S. and British literature. Before joining Dominican, she served as associate vice president for academic affairs, and associate chief academic officer at Fordham University from 2009-2011. She joined the faculty at Fordham in 1995 as an assistant professor of English and received tenure in 2001. Pitchford, 55, was born in the United Kingdom and moved to the United States in her early teens. She lives in San Rafael.
Dominican Scholar: Expanding Our Global Reach
What’s cyan and gold and read all over the world? Dominican Scholar, the University’s online repository that showcases the scholarly and creative work of the students, faculty, and staff of Dominican University of California. Michael Pujals, scholarly communications librarian, launched Dominican Scholar in 2014. “My initial goal was to make our faculty’s work more accessible to a larger audience,” said Pujals. Twenty-five percent of our downloads go to developing nations, so there’s a social justice aspect of creating access to knowledge.” Dominican Scholar boasts 896,961 total downloads in 225 countries and territories (at time of printing). The repository, which can be accessed at scholar.dominican.edu, hosts a variety of materials, including student and faculty research, publications and reports, art, and special projects. Access is free and open to the public. Users can search for information by topic or author, and everything is indexed in Google. Another feature allows authors to receive readership reports when their work is downloaded. Altogether, the pieces paint a broad picture of what’s happening on campus and expand Dominican’s reach globally. “Having our work online is important to make it accessible to the public,” said Pujals. “This was especially evident during the pandemic lockdown. The Library was closed to the public, and most of the students were living away from campus. If anyone wanted to read our undergraduate senior theses or graduate master's theses, the only way they could do that was by finding the ones that we have online in Dominican Scholar. Our theses in print see very little use, but the ones online are read around the world.” Dominican student and faculty work in this repository has been downloaded by people from the Library of Congress, the United States Senate and House of Representatives, the National Institutes for Health, the Cape Provincial Administration in South Africa, the South East Sydney Local Health District in Australia, the London School of Economics and Political Science in England, and the County of Marin.
Graduate alumni: Don’t see your thesis online? Contact Michael Pujals at michael.pujals@dominican.edu about adding a copy to Dominican Scholar.
Barowsky School of Business Launches New MSBA
Launching a new academic program during a pandemic wasn’t exactly what Yung-Jae Lee, dean of the Barowsky School of Business, initially envisioned. But Dominican University of California’s new Masters of Science in business analytics (MSBA) has exceeded his high expectations. “Our enrollment target was 12 students,” Lee said. “We ended up with 21. Four of them are very recent Dominican graduates, and another eight are recent graduates from other universities. With an MBA, it’s helpful to have work experience. With the MSBA, you can jump right in.” Designed for recent college graduates and business professionals looking to change careers or expand their career potential, the MSBA is a one-year program that teaches students to use data analysis and visualization to communicate complex information effectively and make actionable business decisions. “While a data scientist allocates a lot of time to collecting and cleaning the data, a business analyst focuses on finding insight that will be useful to an organization,” said Lee. “There is a huge talent gap in this field and a lot of demand. Employers are looking for people with this skill set. I wanted Dominican to be the first player in our region.” Courses in machine learning, cloud computing and data visualization aim to equip students with skills they can use right away. A third of the first cohort is comprised of working professionals from a variety of industries, all with an interest in understanding data and how to use that knowledge to grow their organizations. Although still virtual for now, the degree’s cohort model, which allows each incoming class to take courses together, will enhance collaboration and interaction in all their classes. “Many other schools have assumptions about what kind of student will succeed in a business analytics program and have stringent prerequisites they are looking for,” Lee said. “In our program, as long as students have critical thinking and communication skills, we can teach them, and we will prepare them to learn new skills on their own.” Under Lee’s leadership, the Barowsky School of Business will continue to expand its graduate-level offerings with a new Master of Science in Accounting program launching in fall 2021. “There always has been a steady demand for qualified accountants in accounting firms and all kinds of organizations,” Lee said. “This one-year analytics-focused accounting program will give our graduates the skill sets to thrive in the changing accounting industry.”
Stacy Davidson has been named director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University. Davidson brings to the role more than 30 years of student affairs work in which she has served as a mentor and advocate for young people. The student-facing position was created in association with the University’s Diversity Action Group (DAG) and the Associated Students of Dominican University (ASDU) to support the student experience in programming, education and advocacy.
“The development of this position was part of the year-long listening and planning project that has also led to the drafting by the DAG of a campus-wide Strategic Diversity Plan, to be shared and refined with the campus community as the new academic year begins,” said Dr. Nicola Pitchford, vice president for academic affairs. “We know that every area of campus life and work needs to be intentionally infused with an active commitment to more fully support Black, Indigenous, other people of color, and LGBTQIA — whether as students, employees, or other members of our community — and no one person can or should be responsible for holding our equity-building work.” As director, Davidson will join DAG to lead the campus community in implementing the Strategic Diversity Plan, ensuring it is aligned with Dominican’s mission and the broader institutional strategic priorities. “I look forward to leading Dominican’s work balancing student engagement and programming with fundamental campus-wide curricular and systemic changes needed to build an inclusive, equitable, and diverse campus community,” Davidson said. During the interview process, she asked the search committee — consisting of faculty, staff and students — to recommend priorities for the position's first 90 days. With the committee’s help, she honed in on the following key actions:
Create a Bias Incident Reporting process to handle discrimination issues on campus. It is important that all members of the community know the procedure for addressing concerns and receiving redress as appropriate.
Connect with students in meaningful and intentional ways on cultural and educational programming opportunities that impact campus climate and the overall student experience. Being a resource and advocate for students is a crucial component of this role.
Develop and facilitate ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion training for faculty and staff. This initiative has already received an institutional commitment from University leadership. “I believe that Dominican is primed to create meaningful and substantive change because of the DAG’s mission and its diverse representation of faculty, staff and students motivated and committed to doing diversity work," Davidson said. “Further, students are eager to engage with this newly designed role to create the campus experience they desire and deserve. With institutional commitment, DAG, students, and I will create and implement the vision that we all have for a campus community that embraces and celebrates our diversity.” Davidson joined Dominican in 2018 as director of career development. She also served as the University’s lead integrative coach — helping students with resume revisions, graduate school essay development, and career exploration — and led Domincan’s Mastering College and Life Skills courses. Before her time at the University, Davidson was the director for academic support at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where she created and managed a student learning center, re-designed curriculum for a summer transition program for first-generation, Pell-eligible students, and facilitated academic success workshops. Davidson earned her Master of Arts in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Virginia.
— Stacy Davidson
Welcome Voices
When the Bay Area was placed under a shelter-in-place order in March, Dominican nursing students were much-appreciated voices on the other end of the telephone for seniors in West Marin.
Ordinarily, they would have met in person. For the past six years, Dr. Ellen Christiansen and her community health nursing students have performed in-person home visits in collaboration with Laura Sherman and Susan Deixler, care managers at West Marin Senior Services (WMSS).
Last semester, thanks to fast action by Christiansen and colleagues in the Department of Nursing, the in-person program transformed into a telenursing option designed to provide direct patient care experience for Dominican’s senior nursing students. It was a win-win move — one that ensured dozens of senior nursing students would gain the clinical hours necessary for spring graduation. In March, Dominican received approval from the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) for the telenursing clinical placement option. This came as obstacles to completing clinical education hours risked delaying graduation for thousands of nursing students in California. Many hospitals and other healthcare facilities where students complete their clinical rotations suspended their student programs as the facilities responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Dr. Andrea Boyle, chair of the nursing department, the quick pivot was a testament to the University’s strong community ties. “Forming long-term and trusting partnerships with community organizations is something that Dominican does very well,” Boyle said. “When we suggested the telenursing program, we received an immediate yes.”
Last spring, the program paired 30 senior nursing students with about 50 elderly WMSS clients under the supervision of WMSS staff and Dominican faculty clinical instructors. The Dominican students interacted with elderly and at-risk clients through a series of telephone or online sessions addressing nursing, health, and social well-being issues. Throughout the course, students took a full medical history, compiled a complete medication list, and completed both a thorough functional assessment and a home safety checklist. Students also researched medical topics on behalf of their clients to provide evidence-based information for the client to discuss with a primary care provider. The course instructors held video conferences with their clinical groups to present and discuss their cases, and the clinical group was invited to contribute ideas for the ongoing care plan. WMSS’s Sherman said the telenursing program provided a critical new service to semi-rural and rural seniors sheltering in place and experiencing increased isolation and heightened concern. “The telenursing program quelled many seniors' fears and conveyed peace of mind,” she said. Once it was announced, the demand was strong. “I received client phone messages saying, ‘When is the student nurse calling me? I'm ready!’” Based on last spring’s telehealth program’s success, Christiansen has expanded Dominican’s partnership with area organizations and placed 65 first-semester senior nursing students in community settings this fall. Dominican has now established telehealth arrangements with four agencies (see visual representation). Senior nursing student Nora Fey is currently “seeing” two WMSS clients — one male, one female — for weekly telehealth visits. Fey speaks to each client for about an hour. "I look forward to my calls,” she said. “We speak at the same time on the same day each week. It’s a date!" She first checks in with clients about their week and sets goals to work toward over the week to follow. Fey and her clients go over medications and safety concerns, but just as important is the social connection she provides. “Social connections are so important to maintaining optimal health for everyone, but especially older adults,” she said. “Social isolation can hinder their health.” Fey says she genuinely feels that her telenursing experience has been meaningful. “Telenursing has helped me enhance my skills and be able to care for and communicate with anyone,” she said. “I am truly learning a lot from these individuals. They are making me a better person.” Christiansen predicts that even after the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth will continue to be an important tool utilized by Dominican nursing students and community health organizations. “Telehealth is a wonderful service to offer to older adults who are trying to age in place,” she said. “Many of these people were already isolated, and the pandemic has only exacerbated that. Our students are making a difference.”
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students are working with West Marin Senior Services to conduct phone and Zoom contacts.
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students are providing telehealth services through the Marin Health and Human Services Division of Aging and Adult Services. students are working with the Sonoma County Area Agency on Aging to do a needs assessment and provide telehealth to 20 older adults.11
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Dominican students are working with Vivalon (formerly known as Whistlestop) to provide telehealth to 20 clients.
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Together, Dominican students are helping 90 older adults this semester through the various agencies.
