Education 10.12 - Flipbook - Page 7
The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, October 12, 2025 7
Lifting up Maryland’s economic powerhouses
Universities address needs in nursing, life sciences
and space technology
By Alex Keown, Contributing Writer
cience and technology is a
cornerstone of Maryland’s
economy. Three universities
have developed academic
programs that will meet
growing
demands
for
workforce initiatives and leadership
training in pharma and biotech, nursing
and aerospace technology.
S
in the future,” says McLaughlin, who
earlier this year presented a research
paper at the American Society for
Mass Spectrometry conference on
mass spectrometry and allied topics
in Baltimore. “I’m really excited to
see where this goes. It’s this kind of
opportunity that drew me to Salisbury
University in the first place.”
With an annual financial impact
of more than $20.7 billion, the life
sciences industry and its infrastructure
of business, research institutions and
federal agencies is a cornerstone of
Maryland’s economy. Maryland’s life
sciences ecosystem is the third largest
in the nation, behind San Francisco and
Boston, respectfully. The importance of
the life sciences prompted Salisbury
University to create the new biochemistry
and molecular biology (BMB) major, a
joint program between the chemistry
and biology departments, explains
Chemistry Department Chair Stephen
Habay, Ph.D. He says the program
will prepare graduates for positions
in the pharma and biotech industries.
Biochemistry has been one of the most
requested degree paths at Salisbury
University and this program will now
meet that demand, Habay says.
Anne Arundel Community College
students are blasting off into a new era
of scientific research by participating
in hands-on scientific workshops
sponsored by the National Aeronautical
and Space Agency (NASA). This
summer, Deborah Levine, chair and
associate professor of physical science,
and a group of students traveled to
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to
compete in the RockOn program (seen
at right), a hands-on workshop that
teaches participants how to develop an
experiment for sounding rockets over a
five-day period. The AACC students
built a payload that was launched into
the upper atmosphere. Levine, who
previously worked on the development
of several space telescopes at the
California Institute of Technology,
called the RockOn workshop a unique
opportunity for AACC students.
“The degree is general enough
where it could apply to many different
areas under the life sciences programs.
Students will be prepared for graduate
programs but will have enough
knowledge to jump right into biotech
companies, work in laboratories,
clinical trial research,” Habay says.
“The students get to do something
real from the get-go, something that
is going to go into space,” Levin says.
The new degree program began
this fall. Multiple students who were on
either the chemistry or biology tracks
have shifted their studies to the new
major, Habay says. The degree will
not only prepare students for a career,
but it will also allow them to positively
impact worldwide needs for life-saving
therapies, he says. One such student
is Cleo McLaughlin, a senior who
was previously majoring in chemistry.
McLaughlin says they hope the BMB
track will better position them for a
future job in chemical instrumentation.
The success of that event has
laid the groundwork for the next
experience, NASA’s RockSat program.
The program will be run out of the
community college’s STEM center
and has received funding from the
Maryland Space Grant Consortium.
AACC students will design and build a
new payload that will be launched into
the atmosphere next summer, says
Levin, who will be the faculty lead on
the project. The experiment will be fully
exposed to the space environment,
she notes. They are currently
recruiting students to work on multiple
aspects of the project, including
coding, engineering, fabrication, and
mechanical and electrical design.
“I want to come out of this well
positioned as a candidate and this
(degree)willgivemethebestopportunity
“Students are really doing this;
they’re getting an opportunity to
learn how to build things that will go
into space and also learning how to
network with people from the tech
community in the region.”
A pilot program at the University of
Maryland’s School of Nursing launched
last year to support nurses transitioning
from clinical practice into an academic
setting. The Nursing Professional
Residency for Outstanding Faculty
(N-PROF) program is designed to
help new faculty learn how to develop
classroom curricula, be more effective
advisors and teachers for student
nurses.
The goal of the N-PROF program
is to bring the faculty in and get them
acclimated to the requirements of their
new position. Susan Bindon, the school
of nursing’s associate dean for faculty
development, says the program instills
the “four Cs” into the new faculty:
Confidence, competence, connection
and contribution.
When nurses transition from clinical
work to faculty, they typically come
into the new field with “fantastic clinical
skills, but almost zero preparation
for teaching,” Bindon says. But,
once they begin a teaching career,
the transitioning nurses discover
other factors in their job, including
scholarship, research, committee work
and the like.
“In Maryland, in all of our acute
care hospitals, nurses get a one-year
residency program. Faculty don’t get
that. This program is called transition
to practice, and I like to think of this
as transition from practice and back to
academia,” Bindon says.
Caitlin Donis is a University of
Maryland assistant professor of
organizational systems and adult
health who has gone through the yearlong N-PROF program. Donis was a
nurse in clinical practice for more than
10 years before she received her Ph.D.
and shifted to academia.
“I had some academic training when
I received my doctorate, but once you
get a faculty job, there’s no real guide
for it. There are lots of aspects for the
job that just aren’t spelled out in the
beginning. You have to learn how to
work in the field, manage and prioritize
projects,” Donis says. “This program
really helps you examine what needs
to be done and how to do it.”
The program is especially important
as the nation is facing both a shortage
of nurses, as well as nursing instructors,
Bindon says.
Becoming faculty takes preparation.
Being successful requires preparation.
Transitioning to the academic side,
you need support, structure, resources
and you need to know that you’re not
alone,” Bindon says. “Better faculty
makes better students and better
nurses.”
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