Title: Assistant Professor of Nursing

Company: Tennessee Wesleyan College

Location: Maryville, Tenn.

Initially choosing this career path because of her passion for health care, Lisa Kirkland advanced toward the educational side of nursing, as she is currently an assistant professor of nursing at Tennessee Wesleyan College. As a higher education provider, Tennessee Wesleyan College relies on Ms. Kirkland’s seasoned expertise to continue their evolution as a four-year liberal arts institution, offering the first baccalaureate degrees on its centennial anniversary. She has always found herself educating others – whether they were other staff members, patients or family members – and now she currently teaches undergraduate nursing students in classroom, clinical lab, and direct patient care settings.

The one aspect of Ms. Kirkland’s working condition she would most like to change is to have more nurses at bedside and less turnovers. Her professional goal is to continue in a similar role and to expose students to more opportunities. Ms. Kirkland believes it has been her faith in knowing that educating professionals to help others is what she needs to do in her life-time, as she keeps to the completion of all her projects.

Ms. Kirkland’s greatest accomplishment to date is being able to make a difference in the lives of others, remaining strong through her compassion for her students and administrative skills. The biggest challenge she has had to overcome was multi tasking, as she is currently working on a Ph.D., while having to balance the number of students she needs to provide with quality treatment. In 2014, she was awarded Excellence in Nursing Education Award from the Tennessee Nursing Association. During her free-time, Ms. Kirkland is a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society, a Baptist Nursing Fellow, mission supporter for the American Red Cross, and relaxes while fishing.