DNP & DNP-NP Program Webcast

The RN to BSN, MSN, Post-Master’s Nurse Practitioner Certificate, and DNP programs at Maryville University are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, 655 K Street, NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20001, 202-887-6791.

Lauren Galvin: Good evening, everyone. My name is Lauren Galvin, and I’ll be your moderator for this evening’s webinar. I’d like to start by thanking all of you for joining us for the Maryville University online doctor of nursing practice and DNP-NP information session. We’re going to start with just a couple housekeeping items. Please note that the presentation is being broadcasted through your speakers, and you are set to listen only mode. You may type questions into the Q&A box at the left of your screen at any time. We will do our best to answer as many questions as possible during our Q&A session at the end of the webinar, but if we’re unable to get to your question today, an enrollment adviser will follow up. Today’s webinar is also being recorded, and you can use the same link to watch it again on demand at your convenience.

All right, so a quick overview of our agenda. We will be talking about Maryville University, the DNP, and DNP-NP programs, enrollment requirements, tuition, and the online experience. Then Dr. Marvin Cohen, a recent DNP graduate, will tell us about his experience in the program. As previously mentioned, we’ll be answering your questions at the end of the presentation, but please type them in the Q&A box any time.

At this time, I’d like to introduce our panelists, Dr. Marvin Cohen and Elaine Williams. Dr. Cohen works as a nurse practitioner within a busy internal medicine hospitalist practice group, and has received degrees from the University of Florida, Ball State University, University of Pennsylvania, and most recently his DNP online for Maryville University. He has worked in various health care settings over the past 20 years. Outside of work, Dr. Cohen enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and playing the piano. His personal goals are to increase providers’ abilities to deliver culturally competent health care for all populations. Thank you again for joining us, Dr. Cohen. We’re happy to have you.

Dr. Marvin C.: Thank you so much, and good evening to everyone.

Lauren Galvin: Our next presenter tonight is Elaine Williams. Elaine, can you take a second to tell us about your background?

Elaine Williams: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for attending. Again, my name is Elaine Williams. I’m an enrollment adviser here at Maryville. I’ve been with Maryville University for two years, and I’ve been working as an enrollment adviser for the last 17 years, and I’m happy to be here.

Lauren Galvin: Great. Thank you very much. Now, that we’ve been introduced to our panelists, we’re going to go ahead and get started with our presentation. Without further ado, I will hand it back to Elaine.

Elaine Williams: All right. Want to let you know a little bit about Maryville University. Maryville University is actually one of the oldest private institutions in St. Louis, Missouri. We were founded back in 1872, and as you can see, Maryville has achieved some great accolades, namely we are named as one of the best online graduate nursing programs by U.S. News and World Report. The DNP program is 100% online, and now it does revolve around a scholarly project of your choosing. With that scholarly project, you will actually work with your enrollment adviser to kind of help come up with a topic if you are having any problems coming up with a topic. Each course is a stepping stone to completing that scholarly project, but however the nice thing about it our program is very flexible. It can be completed in as little as 20 months or five semesters.

Now, in order to qualify for our program you must have a master’s degree from a regionally accredited institution and also either CCNE or ACEN accredited nursing program. I also kind of what to add in there even though it says a minimum cumulative GPA of a 3.25, we also will not accept any C’s in the master level courses. Oh, and your essay is also going to show the introduction to your scholarly project, and, again, your enrollment adviser will work through that with you. The DNP-NP concentration is designed for the master’s prepared registered nurse that is not an advanced practice nurse. This is the program that most of our master’s with education or a master’s in leadership or executive track like to go so that they can earn their DNP, and at the same time will be earning their nurse practitioner certificate. It’s not a requirement for you to have your board certification. However, it is required that you will have an unencumbered RN license in the US and at least one year of direct patient care nursing. Then also in the essay, you are also going to be covering your scholarly project, and, again, your enrollment adviser can assist you with that.

Now, the DNP is going to, like I said, going to cover the scholarly project. However, it’s also going to allow you to focus on evidence-based practice that DNPs. That scholarly project is really going to be based upon evid nce-based practice. You’re going to be building on that as part of your scholarly project. It’s evidence-based practice that’s already out there. You’ll definitely be able to … It’s really designed for you to become that policy maker or changer at the legislative levels, and also to be able to improve patient outcomes at your local level, state level, national level, as well as global level.

My favorite part. Again, as I was saying, we’ve been talking about the scholarly project. It does, again, revolve around that scholarly project, and I can’t really stress enough, but how I look at the scholarly project is really your passion project I would say. Anything that you are assionate about in your practice that you have seen that you really have that burning desire to improve or change at the clinical setting. It can be any topic, and, again, your enrollment adviser can help you come up with a topic or kind of help hone in on just more of a, not such a broad view on the topic but really kind of get your point across of what you’re doing. What’s really nice about this scholarly project is we have so much support here at Maryville. That is something we pride ourselves on. It starts with your enrollment adviser, who’s going to walk with you throughout the whole entire application process. Then your instructors. They’re there to really help guide your scholarly project so that you are
prepared to present that to the institutional review board.

Then on top of that you are going to be assigned a program chair. The role of the program chair is really, again, to help guide your project so that you will pass through the institutional review board. I really want to say what’s awesome about the program chair is that that chair is not chosen at random. The chair is chosen based upon your scholarly project, and your interests will be in alignment with one another.

Now, the cost per credit hour is $897 for the doctoral courses, so if you’re just doing the doctorate level courses then it would just be $897 a credit hour. If you’re the DNP-NP program, you’ll have also master level courses, and so the NP courses are, or I should say master level courses, are really geared towards you becoming board certified. The DNP courses are going to revolve around that scholarly project, and the master level courses are $797 a credit hour. Then there is a semester fee of $650 each semester. That actually will cover your malpractice insurance fee, your clinical processing fee, your technology fee, your Typhon software fee usage, which is a software that we use to log your clinical time, the exam proctoring fee, as well as your graduation fee and unlimited transcripts.

We are on a 16-week semester, and you’ll take eight-week courses. For the most part, it’s one eight-week course at a time, for the most part. However, there may be some semesters where you have one eight-week course and two eight-week courses, or a 16-week course paired with another eight-week course. However, it is completely asynchronous except for the psychiatric, the DNP-NP psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner program. That is specific to board certification requirements. There is synchronous time that you will have to meet with your clinical instructor, and that will be done distantly. You do not have to ever come into the campus for that. That’ll be done online, and you’ll know very well in advance whether that’s going to be done at 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. We allow you to know that well in advance so you can prepare and make those necessary changes in your schedule if you choose to go the DNP-NP psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner route. Any other of the concentrations in the DNPNP program are completely asynchronous, and then any of the classes in the DNP program are also completely asynchronous.

We use Canvas as our online campus. Definitely very user-friendly. I also wanted to let you know we have you go through an extensive online orientation that takes you step by step on how to utilize the tools that are in Canvas, so you will not have any surprises when you go into the program. As far as the faculty and peer interaction, as I stated to you earlier, you’ll have live discussions with your instructors. What’s really, again, awesome about those live discussions is that your instructor is really there to nswer your questions, address any concerns that you
may have with upcoming homework assignments. What I’ve found with the peer interaction is I’ve found that my students have said they have made great friends that live thousands of miles away from them. It’s definitely a program that you will be able to keep moving forward with the same people in the same classes. I mean, not all the time will you have the same classes together. However, you get to go through this experience together and really make great relationships.

Lauren Galvin: Great. Thank you so much, Elaine, for all that information. Now, we are going to get to Dr. Cohen and get him to answer some questions, some common questions that we hear. If you’re thinking of any other questions for either Elaine or Dr. Cohen, go ahead and enter those in the Q&A box. Dr. Cohen, this first question I’m going to ask you, if you could just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started in the field of nursing.

Dr. Marvin C.: Okay. Thank you so much, Lauren, for that question. Good evening everyone, again. I can talk a little bit about my background. My background has been in nursing and public health for over about 20 years, and then I worked in various settings. I worked at the bedside as a nurse. I’ve worked in various units inside the hospital, and I’ve also done some administration. As a nurse practitioner, primarily have done primary care, as well as acute care, so I have obtained both certifications as a family nurse practitioner and an adult gerontological acute care nurse practitioner. I’ve been in nursing, and I absolutely enjoy nursing, so you’ll hear some of my passion when I talk about nursing, and I think that everybody should consider nursing because I think nursing is just great. I feel that what I also enjoy about nursing is the fact that I’m able to help other people.

Lauren Galvin: Okay, great. Let’s move to our next question here. Why did you decide to pursue the doctor of nursing practice, the DNP degree?

Dr. Marvin C.: Okay, great. Excellent question. I think this is an important thing for any potential student to really think about, because it’s a commitment. For me, I wanted to do it at the right time, and I also wanted to make sure that I can enjoy that experience.
Now, that may sound weird, but I felt like for me with my doctorate program, I want to be able to enjoy it because it is the passion piece, it’s the culminating piece of all of my nursing together. It’s the highest clinical degree of practice, and so what I wanted to do was to make sure that I would be able to gain additional skills beyond the master’s level that would help me be able to shape practice management, look at different practical strategies, what’s balancing the quality of care that we deliver as nurse practitioners and that our patients receive. I really
wanted to also be able to have that highest level of practice beyond the master’s level so that I can become more proficient with all these improvement strategies that are needed with creating and sustaining organizational and policy changes that are needed to help shape our health care system.

Lauren Galvin: All right, great. Our next question: Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in the online environment at Maryville?

Dr. Marvin C.: Yes. Yes. One of the reasons why I actually chose Maryville as a student when I was interested in applying for the program was the fact that the program was 100% online. I work as a nurse practitioner. I have a family, and so I wanted to be able to basically go to school when I wanted to, and the online environment allowed me to be able to do that. Just like what was just described in terms of the rientation to the online environment using Canvas, Canvas is the system that you use to log in to take your courses and where all your course information is. You get the hang of Canvas right away by the end of that orientation, and then you learn different things because your instructors and your professors will help lead you into where they are talking about where assignment may be posted or where things need to be posted. I actually saw that from the whole semester.

One of the things that I did is the first day that a class started, I could see all of my assignments. That works really well for a person like me and with my personality because I have to be organized. The online environment was perfect because I knew exactly what assignments were due. I knew when there was a paper due, a discussion board that was due. I just knew when everything was due, so to me it just blended really, really well with my personality. I felt that I was able to go to school at any time I wanted to. I did everything that my friends and my family were
doing. The only thing is that I had homework. I can still travel. I can still volunteer. I can still go to work, and I did actually work full time through the entire program. I enjoyed it.

Another thing that was also mentioned earlier is that you do meet friends, and these are your colleagues. Even though we don’t live in the same community, you do meet some friends through your courses. They become your support system through the program, so it was excellent. I absolutely loved every piece of the program.

Lauren Galvin: That’s great. Thank you. Had you done online schooling before, or was this your first time?

Dr. Marvin C.: I actually did. I have done online schooling before. I obtained my master’s degree through Ball State University and the University of Pennsylvania online actually, so I was familiar with the online environment. When I did attend Maryville, I had never
used Canvas before, so that was just the only thing that was kind of very different, but the online environment wasn’t foreign to me. I can go back to when I first took a class online, it was a little bit different, but, again, the number one thing to be a successful online student is, of course, organizational skills. If you’re organized and you can look at your assignments, know when things are due, you’ll do just fine.

Lauren Galvin: Okay, great, because I know a lot students’ hesitation is that they’re worried about doing online schooling because they haven’t done it before, so it’s nice to hear that that was a smooth transition for you and that you found it easy to use. All right.
Our next question is: Where are you hoping to take your career with your DNP degree?

Dr. Marvin C.: Excellent question. The DNP degree you … All right, what I did is I definitely obtained degree for the things that I said, to help me improve my knowledge on quality, policy, and things like that. For me, the next thing with my DNP degree is actually it’s already started to help me because as soon as you start taking the classes, you start to look at your own clinical practice. It’s something that I don’t think you wait for the degree to be completed for you to start utilizing the knowledge and the information that you gained. Part of the scholarly project also, which is something that you find your passion about, you begin to look at that project a lot closer. You start to use the skills of a DNP graduate along the way. Those of you who are interested in looking into pursuing the DNP degree, that’s why we’re having this session tonight, there is something out there called the DNP essentials. You look at those DNP essent als and that’s what you are kind of geared
towards. That’s what the educational experience is geared behind is helping you meet those essentials. For me, it’s taking all that I’ve learned, and then applying it to my current clinical practice.

The other thing that I’m also interested in doing with my DNP degree is also being able to teach. I absolutely love being able to talk about nursing and to talk about various topics in nursing, so being able to teach is also going to be a way for me to share my knowledge and experiences over the past 20 years back with students.

Lauren Galvin: Great. I think you’ll be a great teacher.

Dr. Marvin C.: Thank you.

Lauren Galvin: You’re very well spoken. All right, so our last question here for you is about the scholarly project. I know you just touched on it a little bit and Elaine had talked about previously, but this is one of the most frequently asked questions that we get
for our DNP program. I’m curious if you can talk to our attendees tonight a little bit about your experience with the scholarly project and maybe some examples of projects of people that were around you in the program, and just any insight you can give into that.

Dr. Marvin C.: Great. Excellent. This is a big thing, and I think when I can think back before I started my program this is where I started to scratch my head a little bit was to say, “Okay, what is a scholarly project?” and then, “What is the requirements for the
scholarly project?” What the scholarly project is, it is looking at where there’s a gap in some evidence-based practice. What do you see that you would think that you could improve on? There has to be a change that comes out of that. For me personally, I work as an acute care nurse practitioner, and I kept realizing that a lot of patients that were on my census to see on a daily basis that were being admitted were patients that have an exacerbation of asthma. I said, “Wow, asthma is something that really could be taken care of in the primary care environment.”
What I did is I created and develop an educational module for family nurse practitioners or adult nurse practitioners or pediatric nurse practitioners, so the thing is that they had to work in the primary care environment. I developed an educational model that was geared towards primary care nurse practitioners with the asthma guidelines. When I did that project, it was an educational project, and then I would teach them the educational guidelines in hopes that if they were using the educational guidelines and the national guidelines that have been published for asthma that that would help to decrease the emergency room visits, unplanned visits to the primary care, and decrease admissions to the hospital.

The scholarly project of course as a student or before you even start the program it sounds extremely overwhelming, but you do have a project chair that walks with you through this whole process. A lot of students, a lot of my classmates, even including myself, we thought very broad, and then your chair helps you narrow and narrow and narrow and narrow your focus, because that’s what the DNP project is for. It is to help narrow your focus and pick a practice problem, what can you do to change that problem, and that’s it, and you’re done. It doesn’t need to be something that is dragged out over five years. That’s unnecessary. That’s definitely not what the target is. The target is to find a clinical practice problem that you see in your own current practice, and that’s the best way to identify that. Once you just kind of start to take a look around, you’ll find, “Hey, there’s something that could be done better here.”

Lauren, you asked me some questions about other projects that we saw. I saw one that was about DVT prevention in a medical-surgical floor in a ortho unit, and what that particular student did is she did an educational module, again, for rehab nurses that worked on an ortho floor that work with postoperative patients and talked about DVT prevention. Some of them were very educational based. There was other ones that were chart reviews to see exactly what was being done with a particular project in terms of antibiotic stewardship t see, “Okay, are we really
doing the right antibiotics for particular diseases that are coming through?” There was ones that were on thermatology that looked also at helping nurse practitioners that work in primary care look at skin disorders, and did they feel that they had enough training on that, which as a family nurse practitioner we don’t really necessarily get a lot of dermatology training, so that was an excellent project.

With the scholarly project, it’s something that you are guided through. It was the bulk of the program towards the tail end. Of course, there are some introductory courses or some standard courses that come along with the curriculum at Maryville, but then you are connected with your chair, and then you begin that whole process to refine it. I think it would be safe to say that you don’t have to have that topic refined at this moment because you will be working with a chair. That’s unexpected for you to have that completely down to the T. I myself even had to, like I had mentioned before, narrow my topic, even what I thought about before. It had always been the topic of asthma, but I just narrowed and narrowed
and narrowed. As you are going through your courses and you learn about the different aspects of research and how to collect data, you will see that you would want to narrow this project, narrow your focus so that you can get the data that you want and get it ethically and so forth. That’s a quick summary on the scholarly project.

Elaine Williams: Marvin, I have a question for you

Dr. Marvin C.: Sure.

Elaine Williams: In regards to your presentation in the institutional review board, could you just go into a little bit? I know you talked about how the program chair really kind of helped you narrow your project down, but how did that presentation go with the
institutional review board? Did you have to come in [crosstalk 00:27:24]-

Dr. Marvin C.: Excellent question.

Elaine Williams: -St. Louis. Okay. Sorry.

Dr. Marvin C.: No, no, and that was the good thing about it, too. A part of the scholarly project before you actually begin doing the actual research or data collection component of the scholarly project, you work on your IRB process. There’s different sections of
paper that you’ll write in different courses. There’s five chapters to this project, the scholarly project, and you don’t write that all in one semester. You start with certain semesters. You may do a chapter here, a chapter there, and then it picks up from there.

In one of the courses, you will begin to work on the IRB. The IRB is the institutional review board, and that is done through Maryville University. They have their own staff that is in charge of the IRB. What that is is there’s an IRB application, and the IRB application will ask you certain questions, and, again, by even answering those questions with the IRB application it helps you to narrow your thought process in terms of your scholarly project. That IRB, again, is worked on with you and your chair, so you and your chair will go back and forth. You ask that person, your chair, “Hey, what does this question mean?” Or, “Is this suffice?” When you’ve done this before, this is what the IRB is looking for, so your chair really walks you through that process. You’re filling in an application and by writing those sections of the paper before sometimes that’s like a big bulk of the IRB, some of the questions that are on the IRB.

So, it’s basically you’re saving all your work throughout the program because the IRB will kind of trigger you to kind of answer some of those questions, which is that information is sometimes in the paper that you’ve already written. There’s other questions that you’ll have to just, it’ll be your first time being exposed to needing to supply that answer, but yet you still will be able to complete the IRB application.
The IRB application it does take time, but it’s something that it’s not the night before kind of homework assignment. It is something that you’ll have to work on ahead of time, and your chair won’t let you wait until the night before because it’s something that does take time because they have to go over the application with you and go back and forth, check it for grammar, check it for spelling. The same thing that you would do with any kind of scholarly work that you’re producing. At the end of the IRB application, that is submitted to the IRB board, and they will
contact you back and let you know that your IRB, your research proposal, has been approved, and they will let you know when you can start to collect your data. They walk you through the whole aspect of that, and there’s a sample IRB that is provided in a course so that you’re not so unfamiliar with what the IRB should look like, the end product. Again, most of your chairs will be able to help walk you through that, and also provide you with examples and help go back and forth with you through email about that.

The presentation, in a sense there wasn’t a presentation of your research project through the IRB portion. When you have completed your IRB, that’s when you begin to do your data collection. You’ll finish up writing your scholarly project, and then there will be a presentation that you will do at that point to the faculty, to the DNP faculty at Maryville University. That is very easy because you’re basically going
to be talking about what you’ve been doing through the length of your program for your scholarly project, so it’s really not as intimidating as it may sound. They tell you, which I remember this, they say, “Everybody just relax. This is going to be fun.” They make it fun in terms of being able, because they just want to hear what you do. They ask you a few questions, and next thing you know you’re doctor such and such, and it’s great.

Elaine Williams: Marvin, I have another question. Are you going to publish your work?

Dr. Marvin C.: Good question. Actually, that’s a good question because one of the assignments that we had to do in my very last course was to prepare your scholarly project for publication. One of the things I want to do is to actually publish what I did. I live in
the state of Florida, so I want to be able to submit that to the state of Florida Department of Health, because there’s an asthma coalition to be able to provide that additional research and information, and then I would also want to get a chance to do a poster presentation, which the poster is completed already. I just need to submit it to a conference. It’s just that when you submit to conferences, they usually want, the call for abstracts is usually about nine months, six months ahead, and when I was in the program I didn’t have time to research that to submit
at that particular time. I wanted to do that when I was completely done with the program. So, yes, I do plan on publishing and presenting in live conferences about the research that I did.

Elaine Williams: Thank you, Marvin.

Dr. Marvin C.: No problem.

Lauren Galvin: That was great information. Lots of wonderful info for potential students. Let’s see. We are going to go ahead and start with our Q&A session, so we’ll start reading and answering the questions we’ve received so far. Again, if you haven’t submitted
them, go ahead and do that now, and we’re going to get to as many as we can. Our first question I’m going to send to Elaine. This is asking about if Maryville, if we have assistance for writing papers and doing citations for anyone who has been out of academia for a while.

Elaine Williams: It actually is going to start with your enrollment adviser. I know myself when I’m working with my DNP students, I actually prepare you for the essay. The essay has to be written in APA style format, so I always advise my students get your books
out, get your APA style format books out. Also, I give them an essay tip sheet that also gives websites that are accepted by Maryville to use, but as you’re going through the program we also have an online writing center that you can definitely utilize that to help with writing in APA style format with the citations. Also, we do as far as the research part of your project, we have librarians that are actually specific to the nursing program who are available to you via email or phone. So, definitely utilize those resources.

Lauren Galvin: Great. Thank you. I am putting up on the screen here our upcoming application deadline because we did have a question about when the app deadline is for our upcoming fall term, but it’s coming up Monday, July 17th, and those classes start
August 28th. The next question I am going to send to Dr. Cohen. This question is asking, how often did you have live dialogue with instructors, and did you get real input from them?

Dr. Marvin C.: The live dialogue. That’s a excellent point, because as an online student it’s very different than the brick-and-mortar meeting on campus program. You may live in a different time zone. I even had a class with a student who was over in Europe,
which was very neat. You have the contact information to your professors. They have office hours, which are posted in the syllabus, that you will be able to utilize in terms of when you need to contact them. When I did need to speak to the professors of the program, I was able to email them and they were very timely with their responses with getting back to me with what I had a question on something or whatever the matter may be. Some of the professors even provided you with their cell phone number, so you could text and they would kind of give you their hours where you could text them. Some would say, “You can text me up until nine or 10 o’clock at night,” and they would tell you.

When they introduced themselves in the class, you were able to get that information on how they want you to contact them and the time, the method and what’s the fastest way to get ahold of them. I didn’t have any challenges with any of the professors in terms of needing to get ahold of them and I couldn’t. They were all very responsive with what I needed in terms of any questions about assignments and so forth. Also, inside Canvas you could ask a general question, so you can post a question because maybe you weren’t the only one that had a question, or you may think that others may have the same question, so you can post a question, and sometimes the professors would answer the question there. Or, if they received a question in email, they may put the response back on the discussion board so that everyone can see it because it may have been a good
question that for everybody else to know about as well.

In terms of if they were able to give good feedback, of course. I didn’t feel like any of the professors blew me off or didn’t have that passion about teaching. I think at this level as a doctorate student, you want to be able to know that your faculty has your support, and I felt that through all the courses that all the faculty had their support. I also had the contact information from my chair, which you will have their
contact information and their email address. So, my chair and I, we would talk on the way to work. Sometimes we would talk on the way home from work about the project and things that were going on, and we’d communicate through email and so forth. Every piece of technology we used it and it worked out.

Lauren Galvin: Awesome. Thank you. This next question is for Elaine. This is asking, how does the program work for someone who already has an MSN degree?

Elaine Williams: Okay, so I want to be very clear. There is a DNP program that is designed specifically for the advanced ractice nurse, which is the straight DNP. Now, somebody who already has their master’s degree but is not an advanced practicenurse, that is what the DNP-NP program is. The DNP-NP program is going to take pretty much the fact that you’ve already got master’s degree, and really the courses that you would need to take in at the master’s level are the courses that are strictly geared towards you becoming a nurse practitioner, and then the
doctorate level courses are the doctorate courses that we’ve been talking about that revolve around that scholarly project of your choosing. I hope I’ve answered that, but I’m always going to advise you to speak to your adviser who can definitely speak at length and really kind of answer your questions and really dive deeper into that with you, but I hope that answers your question.

Dr. Marvin C.: I can also add on a little bit to that question. I was a student that already had my master’s degree, and just about everyone in my cohort did. The only thing we focused on were just the DNP course, so we just followed the DNP curriculum, and you do get a plan of study that will outline kind of a projected term that you will take the particular courses and what particular sequence you would take the
courses. That’s available for you once you get admitted to the program. That was supplied to me, so I was able to know exactly what course was coming when.

Just to highlight something else that I think is awesome is, and I didn’t know this about Maryville initially, but the advisers, and I hope this is still the same, but the advisers actually take care of the registration process for you. I think that is such an amazing thing because those registration systems, like what course do I sign up for, what’s the course number, what’s the section number, that was taken care of, and
the advisers call and make sure everything is going okay. Kind of to piggyback on the other question, so I’m not only speaking with my professor through the term, I’m also speaking with the adviser who also, “Hey, you’ve been registered. How is everything going?” Then a little spot check throughout that. Then if I needed something, if I had a question about something about the university, I could also call the adviser.

Lauren Galvin: That is still true, so it’s all accurate information.

Dr. Marvin C.: Yay. That’s good.

Lauren Galvin: Just for everyone’s information, Dr. Cohen, you graduated just this summer, correct?

Dr. Marvin C.: I did. I graduated in May. May 2017. I just graduated.

Lauren Galvin: Well, congratulations.

Dr. Marvin C.: Thank you.

Lauren Galvin: Okay. This next question I am going to send to Elaine. If someone hasn’t finished quite all of their credits in their MSN program and they’re working on it, can they go ahead and apply for the DNP or get started on that, or does it have to be completed?

Elaine Williams: Well, it depends on which MSN. If you are doing an MSN as an advanced practice nurse … I’m going to say no to that answer because if you’re doing the straight DNP without the NP courses, you have to be board certified first as an advanced practice
nurse, so you would definitely have to pass your board certification. Then if you are still taking an MSN in education or leadership, your degree has to be conferred before the start of classes. Let’s just say for example, I have a student that’s finishing her MSN degree on August 4th. If I can get confirmation from the registrar that her degree is going to be conferred on August 4th and I can get a letter of conferral, absolutely she can start the classes on August 28th. However, we would need that letter of conferral, and then before classes began on the 28th I would have to have that transcript that says that her degree is conferred or awarded or completed before August 28th. I hope that answers your question, but it is a great question.

Lauren Galvin: All right. This next question is asking if students need to come to campus at any point, or if they can come to graduation.

Elaine Williams: During the program, and that’s definitely a great questio . That’s a question that a lot of my students have. We don’t have any campus visit requirements, so we don’t ever, as you’re going through your program, we don’t ever ask you to come in campus. However, for graduation we absolutely love to meet you, along with the fact that you get to meet your faculty members, as well as your friends that you’ve made throughout the program. You get to meet them in person finally. Graduation is definitely a great time to come up to Maryville. We have a beautiful campus. No, you don’t have to come in to our campus ever for your clinicals. If you’re doing the DNP-NP program, your clinicals are done locally. If you’re doing the DNP program, you don’t have to do any extra clinical time. I want to make sure … You’re basically
doing it on the … Your clinical time they take 500 hours from the fact that you are an advanced practice nurse, and the other 500 is any time that you spend on your scholarly project.

Lauren Galvin: Great. Thank you. We have time for just a couple more questions here. This next one is for Dr. Cohen. Did you find the test and papers to be manageable?

Dr. Marvin C.: Yeah. Good question. I wouldn’t say that they were like tests tests throughout the program from what I remember. I think everything was more so about you being able to express yourself in a written format in discussion boards and with group assignments and with your projects, and then with your papers and the scholarly project. There weren’t like, and I did just the DNP portion. I did not do the MSN
portion of the programs there at Maryville. I only did the DNP portion. In the DNP track, I didn’t have necessarily tests, but the assignments and everything were very doable. They were very manageable. Like I said earlier when I was talking about the program, one of the things that was good was that when the class opens up on Canvas the first day of class, you’re able to see your assignments and you can know. So, I would know, “Okay, there’s a five-page paper due in week four,” so I would just plan for that.

I would look ahead at the requirements for that paper, and then kind of see what did it require. If I had a paper that was shorter, then I would know how to just budget my time. Everything was manageable. I didn’t find anything was unreasonable, but definitely the biggest key I could say is look over your syllabus the first day of class and organize yourself. That gives you the opportunity to also if you need to make changes at work or if you know that you had a vacation planned or something like that, you would know, “Okay, week four I have a paper due, but I also have a wedding to go to, so I need to work on that sooner than later.” Then you can always turn your work in early. The professors never barked about that at all.

Lauren Galvin: Okay, great. This next question is for Elaine. Are there breaks between semesters?

Elaine Williams: That is a great question. There are not breaks between a semester per se. For example, a semester will end on a Friday. Your next semester would begin on that Monday. However, there is a break every year in between mid December to mid January, so you have that time off for a month, but as Dr. Cohen was saying, you can really manage your time to put in a vacation. He said that he went on vacation.
He did everything that his family and friends did, except he had homework. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Cohen, and he said, “As long as you are managing your time wisely, you will have time to still do everything else that is going on in your life.”

Lauren Galvin: Perfect.

Dr. Marvin C.: Yes. I can add to that as well,-

Lauren Galvin: Yeah, please

Dr. Marvin C.: -if I can have a minute or so. I think that’s a excellent point there too is that with the program, again, I just can’t stress enough about just the self organization and management of that, and that makes it doable. It really does make it doable, and I
went straight through the program. I didn’t take any semesters off. Good thing that life allowed me to have that, but some of my cohorts that I initially started with, some of them they had to take time off because they were having a baby or something like that. That was fine, but I went straight through. The courses are eight weeks or 16 weeks long, so it’s very doable. Again, that last week of class you
can always get your work done, and then you can have more than just a weekend off in between classes. You can have maybe five days off, six days off if you just get your work done and know what’s ahead and then turn your work in on time.

Lauren Galvin: Awesome. Thank you.

Elaine Williams: Thank you so much for that, Marvin.

Dr. Marvin C.: No problem.

Lauren Galvin: All right, so I’m going to put up here on the screen the link to scedule an appointment with an adviser. You can go ahead and open this link or the link to our brochure or to our website from the resources widget that’s on the bottom lefthand
side of your screen. Feel free to set up time with an adviser. You can ask any outstanding questions. You can start an application. You can ask them questions to finish your application. We’re here to help you and answer any questions that you have. As we mentioned earlier, tonight’s webinar is being recorded, and you can use the same links from the live session to access the on-demand version at any time. Keep in mind that the approaching application deadline for the fall semester is Monday, July 17th, so it’s important to schedule an appointment today to discuss
your next steps with your adviser and begin or finish the application. I just want to say a quick thank you again to both Elaine and Dr. Cohen for joining us tonight. It was a lot of helpful information, and I know everyone appreciates it, so thank you for your time.

Dr. Marvin C.: No problem. Thank you for having me.

Lauren Galvin: We hope everyone found this webinar useful, and we look forward to speaking with all of you soon. Have a great evening.