Linda Stroup: “The best combination I could ever ask for is to teach nursing in higher education.”

As a veteran staff nurse, Metro State’s Linda Stroup is aware that seconds can often divide life and death. In late July, she experienced some differnt seconds, at a different speed, on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Stroup, who chairs the Nursing department and is director of the College’s Accelerated Nursing Program (ACNP), was one of 16 visitors invited to spend 26 hours aboard the aircraft carrier through a program designed to showcase the day-to-day operations of the U.S. Navy. She and three other Colorado nursing educators toured the carrier’s operating room and bunked up for the night in the officers’ quarters. Snapshots that include the landing of an F-18 chronicle the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a signed declaration displayed in her office details the specifics of the July 30 experience.

When the cargo plane carrying the group from a U.S. Naval base in San Diego landed, it went from 105 miles per hour to zero in two seconds. Later it catapulted off the flight deck to reach 128 miles per hour in three seconds. Five seconds and 26 hours that Stroup will surely never forget.

Juggling and balancing
The experience on the carrier was a brief interlude in Stroup’s lengthy record in nursing education at programs in Colorado, Ohio and Canada. Before coming to Metro State two years ago, Stroup spent 13 years at Arapahoe Community College (ACC) four as a full-time faculty member and nine as nursing program director.

Married with two adult sons, Stroup understands the complexities and challenges facing nurses who often work long, labor-intensive and mentally draining shifts.

“Through my whole career, it’s been combining family life with working in higher ed and with, for the most part, having that clinical work also,” Stroup says. “Between my husband and me, we just would juggle and balance and get those things to all work out.”

Nurses are in short supply across the nation and Stroup believes the peak of the shortage has not quite hit and will be compounded over the next several years with the retirement of both veteran nurses and nursing faculty across the nation. As baby boomers leave the nursing workforce, Stroup says they will need more health care, causing a double effect that is likely to pinch health care resources.

Finding qualified clinical nurses to transition into an academic setting is also a major challenge facing nursing programs. Stroup says she feels fortunate to work with talented and passionate peers at Metro State and believes strongly that the quality of the College’s program will go a long way in recruiting and retaining innovative nursing educators in the future.

Two options
The Metro State program is broken into two distinct learning tracks: the Baccalaureate Registered Nurse Completion Program (BRNCP) and the Accelerated Nursing Program (ACNP). According to Stroup, the RN to BSN program builds upon a nurse’s associate degree or diploma studies to provide a well-rounded and balanced perspective that expands existing training and experience. The accelerated program spans 13 months and allows students with a prior baccalaureate degree (in any major) to earn the BSN. The BRNCP program has roughly 170 students enrolled in classes this fall and the ACNP has 32 students.

When she was charting her career aspirations in the mid-70s, Stroup’s primary choices were nursing and teaching. Looking back, she says she truly feels blessed with the opportunities she’s been afforded.

“Teaching nursing is really a natural extension of what you do anyway as a nurse. …the best combination I could ever ask for [is] to teach nursing in higher education.”