Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
9-30-2025
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Second Advisor
Chandra Carter
Abstract
The barriers to academic success among first-generation rural nursing students are substantial, including a lack of knowledge of academic resources, ineffective study strategies, and difficulty navigating the higher education system. These challenges are documented in the literature as resulting in higher attrition rates and lower graduation rates. This quality improvement project was intended to implement and analyze a faculty training module designed to increase faculty awareness and confidence in supporting first-generation rural nursing students at the project site. The project adopted a pre-post intervention design based on High-Reliability Organization principles and Lewin’s Change Model, to determine the effectiveness of targeted faculty training. A total of seven nursing faculty members participated in the project training module through Microsoft Teams. The training module concentrated on the challenges first-generation rural nursing students face, strategies of communication, and the effective use of resources. The Faculty Self-Efficacy Survey to Support At-Risk Students was used to obtain data. The survey is based on the validated Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale. A statistical analysis was used to provide a comparison of pre-training and post-training self-efficacy levels by using paired-sample t-tests. Findings showed statistically significant positive changes in faculty self-efficacy in all measured areas, including Student Engagement, Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management, with p < 0.05. The effect size, Cohen’s d = 1.54, reflects a large magnitude of practice value. This project offers a scalable and cost-efficient template to increase faculty readiness to serve vulnerable groups of students and facilitate greater educational equity in nursing education.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Dowdy, Charlotte, "Quality Improvement Project Improving Faculty Support for First-Generation Rural Nursing Students" (2025). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 214.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/214
