Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
4-28-2026
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Second Advisor
Beverly Clark
Abstract
Tenure-track nursing faculty often balance teaching, service, and scholarship responsibilities, which can be overwhelming when promotion and tenure expectations are unclear or insufficiently supported. At a historically Black university, a school of nursing identified gaps in scholarly productivity and limited guidance for early-career faculty, highlighting the need for structured support. Guided by Knowles’ Adult Learning Theory and Lewin’s Change Theory, this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) quality improvement project examined whether structured faculty development workshops could improve faculty knowledge of scholarly productivity, engagement in scholarly activities, and perceptions of tenure and promotion expectations. A quasi-experimental pre-post design was implemented over six weeks. The intervention included two workshops focused on tenure expectations, evidence-based practice, and practical strategies for scholarly development. Data were collected using the Evidence-Based Practice Knowledge Assessment in Nursing (EKAN), a Likert-type tenure perception scale, and a productivity tracker. Paired samples t-test results demonstrated statistically significant improvements in tenure perception scores (p = .010) and evidence-based practice knowledge (p = .022), with large effect sizes. Despite a small sample size (N = 9), findings suggest that structured, low-cost faculty development can enhance faculty understanding and support scholarly engagement. Ongoing institutional support is essential to strengthen scholarly productivity, improve faculty retention, and prepare the future nursing workforce.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Thorne, Britney, "Quality Improvement Project Bridging the Gap in Scholarly Productivity: An Educational Workshop for Tenure-Track Nursing Faculty" (2026). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 328.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/328
