Appendix B-4.

Kathy Rideout: Increasing Diversity in the Workforce

Jennifer Ann Hoffman, MS, RN – University of Rochester School of Nursing (2023)

Background information

Kathy Rideout is currently working as a Professor of Clinical Nursing and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester (U of R). The University of Rochester School of Nursing (URSON) is a research-intensive university that has a tripartite mission of research, practice, and education. URSON has approximately 700 students, 20 tenured faculty, and 70-80 clinical track faculty. URSON has forty-nine educational programs registered with the New York State ranging from baccalaureate through doctoral programs. Since completing her term as Dean Kathy now holds the title of Dean Emerita. Her main role is working as faculty for the UR Career Pathways Program. This program supports U of R employees that serve in entry-level positions who are looking to advance into the LPN and RN roles by providing support with the college application process, mentorship and financial support.

Kathy began her career as a Registered Nurse in 1979, graduating from Nursing Indiana University of Pennsylvania with her BSN. Kathy began working in Pennsylvania as a pediatric Nurse, working for four years on pediatric units and critical care units. In 1983, she graduated with her Master’s in Science (Nursing Care of Children) from the University of Pittsburgh, where she transitioned into the role of Case Coordinator, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner from 1984-1985. Kathy also worked as a Clinical Nursing Instructor for Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 1986 she moved to Rochester, N.Y., where she began working for Children’s Hospital at Strong as a Pediatric Advanced Practice Nurse as well as working for the URSON as a Lecturer/Senior Associate. Over the years, Kathy rose in the ranks in her position as a Nurse Practitioner, in roles such as Care Coordinator and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Ostomy Specialist. At URSON, Kathy also advanced her career as an Adjunct Associate Professor and then to an Assistant Professor after graduating with her Doctorate of Education in Curriculum and Teaching at the UR Warner School for Education and Human Development. In 2005, Kathy became the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, where one of her most important innovations began while serving in this role. In 2011, Kathy assumed the role of Interim Dean of the URSON and, in 2012, became Dean and Associate Professor of Clinical Nursing.  In 2013, Kathy was promoted to Professor of Clinical Nursing and Pediatrics as well and was appointed Vice President of the University of Rochester Medical Center. Kathy has worked for URSON for a total of thirty-seven years.

Kathy also has a number of accolades to her name. Kathy currently has fourteen publications and has presented sixty-nine presentations at numerous conferences, local speaking engagements, and universities. Kathy has also mentored numerous undergraduate and graduate students and served on countless clinical, academic, and administrative committees. Lastly, Kathy has received twenty-one honors and awards over the course of her career.

Key innovations and their value-added

Among the major accomplishments of Rideout’s tenure:

Center for Employee Wellness. Created and expanded the UR Medicine Center for Employee Wellness (CEW), which was inspired by the vision of Kathy’s predecessor Dr. Pat Chiverton. The expansion helped increase revenue for URSON. URSON nurses and staff manage this program and serve fifty-five employers in New York State through programs such as biometric screens that examine a person’s blood glucose level and cholesterol level to help promote heart health and chronic condition management programs. The CEW also provides N95 FIT mask testing to employees and for students from local colleges. The CEW also manages another business line, Passport Health, started by Dr. Pat Chiverton and serves the community with immunizations and education prior to traveling to foreign countries.

Increasing diversity in the workforce. Kathy worked on developing groundbreaking diversity initiatives that led the school to be recognized as a six-time winner of the Insight into Diversity Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award (HEED).  These initiatives included multiple programs to support a diverse student population, recruitment of faculty from underrepresented groups, and creation of the URSON Council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

School of Nursing expansion project. Worked diligently on a 20,000 sq foot, $15 million vertical expansion tower at Helen Wood Hall. This added three more floors to the URSON, supporting more advanced technology and equipment to advance the academic innovation initiatives at the URSON. The new expansion includes a twenty-bay skills lab, four simulation rooms with a one-way mirrored window for observation from the control room, eight experiential learning rooms that serve as multi-functional instructional rooms, four clinical learning rooms that enhance the realism around standardized patient and clinical nursing student interactions and two-room to accommodate alternate reality and virtual reality technology.

In-depth story of an innovation: Increasing Diversity in the Workforce

How the idea came about and was evaluating/ refining

Kathy has been dedicated to the U of R for over 35 years as an academic leader, an educator, and a nurse practitioner. At the time of this innovation, Kathy was the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Kathy has had a clear passion for increasing diversity in the workforce and had already made some strides in this area. As a nurse practitioner, it was clear to her and demonstrated in the research that “the outcomes of patient care were better if individuals are cared for by a diverse workforce.” In 2008 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ), in collaboration with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), developed a new program, New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) and launched a call for program proposals. This provided a $10,000 grant/per student that would cover tuition and other expenses (room and board, books, etc.) to help increase diversity in the workforce. This call for proposals was a perfect fit for the URSON, and it already was a topic that met Kathy’s passion.

Evaluating whether the initiative is worth pursuing 

Kathy states that “I thought it was worth taking a chance because we had grant money to support it, so it wasn’t going to be a financial hardship.” Increasing diversity in the workforce was already such a passion of Kathy’s. Kathy and the director of the Accelerated Bachelor’s for Non-Nurses (APNN) program at the time already considered applicants’ backgrounds when reviewing candidates for the nursing program and about how that student could add to the diversity of the school and the healthcare workforce. The Dean at the time, Pat Chiverton, already had formed a “Dean’s Advisory Council for Diversity, as diversity and inclusion was also a passion of hers. After Pat stepped down as Dean, this council was transitioned into the URSON Council of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with staff, faculty, and students all serving on the council.

Kathy talks about the tripartite mission of the school and how diversity was a long-standing commitment.  With the development of a new strategic plan, the URSON made this commitment visible in its graphic representation of the URSON mission and vision. “We talked about we’re more than a tripartite mission, you know, it was really four parts, and at the end, we agreed that we have still the three-part mission of research, practice, and education, but DEI encircles all of it, so it wasn’t a separate mission, it was really the foundation from which each of those missions’ proceeds.”

Kathy also describes how URSON was very financially secure at the time to proceed with this innovation. Kathy and I talked about how this would not “sink the ship” by proceeding with the initiative.

Kathy also states, “It could possibly tell us something, and so I think that’s what the value of pilot work is all the time you know it’s going to give you some information, it’s either going to say this idea sucks or this is worth continuing forward and so with each grant application it would be reaffirmed that this was worth keeping and to keep going.” The URSON became only one of five schools across the nation to be awarded the grant all seven times it was offered.

Planning and Gathering Resources 

There were a number of key structures that needed to be put into place before they could begin implementing their initiative. First, there were a number of support services that needed to be put into place, so for example, Kathy states that the student advisors were all personally selected. Having the support of the Dean and CFO was a critical part of the innovation. The CFO, especially, was a large part of this project to ensure they could match funds. In the first year, they decided to match the grant funds of $10,000. The following year they were about to doubled the amount being matched to $20,000. Kathy also recruited Dr. Patrick Hopkins, APNN co-director,  to work with her on the project, which she states was critical. Kathy had such a demanding role at URSON and already needed support to make sure everything was taken care of. The URSON director of admission, Elaine Andolina was enthusiastically involved as well, and everyone played a role in helping to write the grant proposals and implement the program initiatives.

Implementing and Monitoring the Initiative 

In the beginning, the scholars were selected from the traditional application process for the school. Roughly a year in, they developed a separate application for RWJ/NCIN scholars to help formalize the process by which students were selected. This included the students giving detail, such as how they would contribute to the diversity of the workforce.

They also enlisted the support of Elaine Andolina to select the RWJ/NCIN scholars. Kathy and Patrick both had been part of the development from the beginning and were so close to the project that they felt they needed to have someone else select the scholars, so Kathy and Patrick did not meet the scholars until they began the program.

Kathy and Patrick met with the RJW/NCIN scholars once a month for mentorship as part of the mentor and leadership curriculum provided by the RWJ Foundation. During Year 2 of grant funding, the RWJ Scholars led the development of a student support program – Center for Academic and Professional Success (CAPS).  Kathy supported the URSON investment of significant financial support into CAPS for student success services that provided writing tutors, math tutors, and sessions on study skills and time management skills; at one point, they were investing a quarter of a million dollars annually into the program. It became clear to them that it was critical for current students to have mentors. So RWJ/NCIN scholar graduates helped develop and implement the Near Peer Mentorship Program, serving for the first several years as the mentors themselves.

Kathy states, “One nice thing about having a grant is it keeps you accountable. These were annual awards, but then every quarter, you had to produce a report, so that kept us on target to know what the initiatives were and to know the student’s progression. So, we had very clearly written reports, and then you had to do an annual summary at the end of the grant so we had all the information.” Kathy also talks about that because the innovation was grant-supported, everything was constantly monitored, and as outcomes were clearly in a positive trajectory, there was no question about applying for the next round of grant funding.

When I asked Kathy for more detail about what indicated a positive trajectory, she stated, “It is the stories that each one of these individuals had that then kept you going. Kept propelling us forward; we were really seeing that lives are being changed for individuals that would not have had that opportunity before.”

Kathy shared the following story: “I think it was the success and the stories like the first student from Cuba who wrote about how he physically paddled a boat from Cuba to three different islands then landed in Miami at age eighteen. He then went to LPN (Licensed Practice Nurse) school, then got his BS degree in biology, and then he heard about this program, and so you know… he moved to Rochester to be a RWJ/NCIN scholar.” Kathy also shares how this student, after graduation, went on to graduate school to receive his MS degree as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) and Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP), his Doctor of Nursing Practice and is currently serving as a URSON faculty member.

Lastly, while monitoring the initiative, Kathy states, “It wasn’t just changing their lives, but it was creating them to be leaders to change others’ lives.”

Ensuring Long-Term Sustainability 

There were a few factors that helped keep this initiative long-term sustainable. One was that they made this such an intricate and foundational part of URSON that it would be pretty difficult to undo. Secondly, there was a large market of applicants applying to this program, and URSON was very financially secure. Lastly, the successful history of the program and terrific outcomes, including ninety-one student scholars with close to 100% NCLEX pass rates, led to its long-term sustainability. Kathy estimates that twenty-five to thirty of those scholars have become faculty for URSON or are currently faculty.

After being awarded the grant all seven years in a row (one of only five schools in the country to accomplish this), the RWJ/NCIN program concluded. However, because URSON had already been matching twice as much as the grant, they were able to create the Dean’s Diversity Scholars Program that currently continues the original initiative, just without funding from the grant. The CAPS program also still continues to help all current students, and a Dean’s Diversity Fellowship was created to support former scholars to advance and receive their Doctorates financially.  URSON also received the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award (HEED) for six consecutive years, recognizing the accomplishments of the school’s DEI commitment.

Observations and lessons learned

After conducting this interview, I think it takes several things to initiate value-adding innovations in education successfully. I think one of the foundational attributes the entrepreneur needs to have is passion. Kathy began this initiative close to 15 years ago, and you can still hear that passion and fire for this innovation as she spoke about it. Kathy spoke about a passion developing over time that goes straight to your core, not one you can just jump into.

The importance of building a team and one that is just as passionate about the innovation as you are. It’s so easy to try to do everything yourself. However, there can be many moving parts that need to be addressed, and you can’t do it all yourself. The success of the innovations can truly rest on bringing in the right people.

The importance of how the initiative aligns with a number of things. How does it align with your own passion, align with the passion and vision of others, especially stakeholders such as Deans and faculty, and how does it align with the mission of your school or organization? Kathy’s innovation did not only just align with everyone’s vision; it became foundational in the school’s mission, and it encompassed everything the school believed in.

I learned more about the importance of piloting an initiative and that you will learn something either way. Maybe even where you can rework things to bring even more value to the innovation.

Now, not every initiative will have the stability this one did. However, having a grant and the school being very financially stable really helped to develop this initiative with the care that it needed in order to be successful. Could this have been as successful if it weren’t for the money to match and even double the grant money? To have the finances to develop and expand the CAPS program to support the students in their education and studies.

Along the lines of having the right people, even though this may be your initiative, having mentors and people that can direct you and support you is huge. No one can ever know it all, and building support and connections are something I think many successful entrepreneurs learn how to do.

I think the grant they had helped as well. Not just about the financial support it provided but the continuous monitoring. The grant kept all involved accountable and kept the program on track. I think any innovation can be successful if everyone is on the same page, tracking success along the way and remaining accountable; the grant provided that in this initiative. Worthwhile for entrepreneurs to note that if they don’t have a grant, how will they keep themselves on track and accountable?

To hear the stories of not only how the students’ lives were changed but how they passed it forward and the impact they would make on others’ lives. That is an innovation that adds value in unimaginable ways. This interview and discussion have most certainly added value to my thinking and learning.