George Washington University School of Nursing Hires Male Faculty to Help Increase Male Student Population

The George Washington University School of Nursing (GW Nursing) has recently employed new male nursing faculty to help serve as role models for male students. Despite a 50 percent increase in nursing faculty since 2014, the university still lags in hiring male faculty.

In 2014, GW Nursing hired four male professors out of 55 total faculty members, and the school now employs five male professors out of 82 total faculty members. A lack of male faculty decreases male student enrollment and limits diversity, so the university has made it a goal to hire more diverse faculty, including men.

Pamela Jeffries, dean of the GW School of Nursing, tells GWHatchet.com, “It is important that we have members of our faculty who represent that demographic to give students classroom leaders they can relate to in terms of shared personal and social constructs.”

Hiring more male faculty gives the increasing male student population more relatable mentors in the predominantly female field. Six percent of faculty in the GW School of Nursing are male, while multiple peer institutions employ an average of 20 percent male nursing faculty. Jeffries is concerned that a low population of male nursing students will translate to a lower proportion of men in each graduating class, skewing the ratio of male to female faculty members. However, GW has a larger than average population of male nursing students that Jeffries hopes will help close the gap in their faculty population.

Mark Tanner, assistant dean of the Bachelor of Science nursing program and an associate professor of nursing, says, “The experience of being a male in our society is inherently different than the experience of being female, so I do think that individuals who identify as male bring different worldviews to the field of nursing.”

While there are no overt barriers to men joining nursing school faculty, increasing male faculty numbers are important to remind male students that they are welcome in the female-dominated field. To learn more about how GW Nursing plans to increase the number of male nursing students by hiring more male nursing faculty, visit here.