Dr. Karolyn Hanna, a professor of nursing at Santa Barbara City College for 29 years, was recently honored with the Association of Community College Trustees’ Pacific Region Faculty Award. The award represents the top community college faculty member in ACCT’s Pacific Region — one of five regions in the United States — for the 2008-09 academic year.
Hanna has made major contributions to the nursing profession at the local, state and national levels. She is a strong advocate of the “self-paced mastery curriculum model” used by the SBCC Associate Degree Nursing Program and has conducted research to identify and describe the knowledge, skills and attitudes expected of new graduates in nursing.
She serves on committees and review boards for a number of state, regional and national organizations and recently participated in a UCLA-sponsored regional grant to further teaching gerontology at California community colleges.
“Karolyn Hanna truly represents what all academic institutions seek in their faculty — an outstanding instructor and mentor, a warm and encouraging colleague, and an academic visionary both in her own field of study and for community colleges in general,” SBCC Superintendent and President Dr. Andreea Serban said.
She added: “The current nursing shortage is one of the biggest challenges our health care system faces today. Faculty such as Dr. Hanna play a critical role in ensuring that our community colleges train and graduate qualified nurses to meet the growing demand.”
At SBCC, Hanna has served two terms as president of the Academic Senate and has served on numerous faculty and college committees, including the Student Learning Outcomes Project and the college’s Accreditation Self Study Team. In 2003, she received the college’s Faculty Excellence Award and recently was named the 2008-09 Faculty Lecturer, the highest honor bestowed on a SBCC faculty member. At the state level, her commitment to teaching excellence was recognized in 1994 when she received the Hayward Award for Educational Excellence from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges.
Hanna is the author or contributor to a number of nursing publications and scholarly papers and has presented workshops on a wide range of topics including service learning in nursing, the meaning of the associate degree, self-paced mastery learning and possible approaches to dealing with the nursing shortage in California.
Joan Galvan is Santa Barbara City College‘s public information officer.