As the newly appointed dean of the Davis and Henley School of Nursing, Karen Daley is the latest addition to the Sacred Heart University (SHU) faculty. But while she may be a new face to the students, she is already familiar with the Fairfield-based school.
“My daughter graduated in 2009 from their media studies program, and so I got to know them as a parent and was very impressed with the way that they take care of the quality of their programs,” she said. “And then over the years, I”™ve watched just their exponential growth.”
Daley also kept a professional eye on the school from 2001 to 2011, when she was the master”™s degree coordinator for the nursing department at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. She left Connecticut to become dean of the College of Health Professions at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Michigan ”” and while she enjoyed that experience, she welcomed a return to Fairfield County.
“My family”™s back in Connecticut,” she said, noting her daughters both had babies recently and were “asking if I could return. I didn”™t want to do it unless I really felt good about a job opportunity in the area. And when that SHU advertisement came up, I was really excited to see it and to really sit down with them and have some conversations.”
Daley said that in her new role at Sacred Heart she did not have to worry about addressing quality control concerns in the nursing school.
“I can see from the curriculum, the awards they”™ve gotten and the accreditations they have that it is excellent,” she said. “But a nursing program is a demanding program, because we”™re teaching people to save lives.”
Daley acknowledged that the Covid-19 pandemic put the nursing profession in a new spotlight and helped the public to “finally understand what nurses do and understanding our role in helping people get through and heal from a disease.” But for the nurses in the center of the crisis, Daley added, the demands of the past 17 months have been beyond challenging.
“We have an exhausted workforce,” she continued. “There”™s some post-traumatic kind of stress, in a sense, that we”™re all feeling after the pandemic. Nurses on the frontlines took the brunt of helping people through this pandemic.”
For the next wave of nurses, Daley is focused on ensuring the nursing school students have a full understanding of the profession”™s demands ”” she defined the work as a “difficult profession with a lot of different nuances,” and she saw the post-pandemic version of the new-normal as a work that is very much still in progress.
One of the items on Daley”™s agenda is the expansion of the school”™s doctoral programs. She encourages nursing faculty to go for their doctoral degrees, noting the Ph.D. is “all about the philosophy and the science that underlies the degree.”
Sacred Heart is New England”™s second-largest independent Catholic university and Daley, who is Catholic, praised the school for what she dubbed its “Catholic intellectual tradition.”
“There”™s always been sort of a juxtaposition between faith and reason,” she explained. “So, we”™ve always had faith over here, and reason and science over here. And what I see, Sacred Heart is the way they”™re bringing the two together.
“The other thing that I love about their mission and vision,” she continued, “is it really talks about the betterment of the community. Being a university is not just about educating people and getting them out the door, but it really is how we better impact our community and improve the lives of the people we serve and the communities we”™re in. That”™s also part of the Catholic intellectual tradition and it really made me feel like this is a place I want to be a part of.”
