Sarah H. Gueldner came to Binghamton from Pennsylvania State University, where she was director and tenured professor of the School of Nursing, had a full graduate faculty appointment with the College of Graduate Studies and held a dual faculty appointment with the university's College of Medicine. She earned her doctorate in nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a concentration in higher education, a master's degree in nursing from Emory University and a bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Tennessee in Memphis.

Faculty Profile: Sarah Hall Gueldnerm Dean of the the Decker School of Nursing

Meeting healthcare needs through research and practice

Graduates of the Decker School of Nursing are in big demand, both in New York and nationwide, and that speaks volumes about the caliber of its professors and its programs, as far as Sarah Hall Gueldner is concerned. Gueldner came to Binghamton University as Decker's new dean in March, and that reputation is partly what drew her here.

She also values the school's endowed name, its broad base of alumni and its newly established doctoral program in rural health nursing -- all signs that the school is well cared for and has reached a certain level of maturity, as she sees it. With all that in place, Gueldner knew that she would be able to assist the school in obtaining widespread national recognition.

She intends to achieve that by enabling students and faculty to pursue and publish research, thereby increasing Decker's visibility as a center for scholarship. "What I came to do, and what I'm good at, is building scholarship," she said. "A school becomes known for its published work." Moreover, as she points out, published research will help Decker to obtain grants and other funding necessary to expand the school's research program.

Decker is also gaining recognition through its Baccalaureate Accelerated Track (BAT), a program responsive to today's healthcare needs that allows mature, highly motivated students from other fields to make a career change to professional nursing.

"I don't think I've ever seen a school work as hard to meet the nursing shortage as this program does," said Gueldner. The BAT program recruits applicants who have earned a bachelor's or higher degree in another field and places them in a 12-month, three-semester program. At comple-tion, graduates earn a BS in nursing.

Decker's master's program in gerontological nursing underscores its dedication to educating nurses who will be able to meet the needs of the aging population. "Few schools have retained a geriatric track for master's students," said Gueldner, even though "most people who are hospitalized are over age 60."

Decker's Elder Services Center, which helps families and other caregivers learn positive approaches to managing the problems associated with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, complements its program in gerontological nursing. Both programs are a good match for Gueldner's skills and interests: she has a passion for gerontological healthcare and issues, and has retained her position as an affiliate faculty member of Pennsylvania State University's Gerontology Center.

"My vision for the Decker School is to see practice and scholarship so enmeshed that they appear seamless," Gueldner said. "Practice contributes to scholarship and scholarship contributes to practice." In this symbiosis, experience gained in treating patients can be shared via scholarly publications, and, as a result, improve the quality of patient care.

For example, someone who is recovering from a broken hip, and therefore cannot drive, faces great obstacles in everyday life, such as simply getting to the grocery store. When caring for such a patient, healthcare providers can gain a unique perspective on the obstacles that a patient must overcome. Subsequently, they can apply what they learn both in their own practice and in their professional research. In this way, Gueldner said, life experience informs scholarship, which, in turn, leads to improved health care.

Health can also be improved by getting people to shift their focus from illness and cure to prevention and health promotion. Gueldner says that too many people expect a quick cure to come from modern medicine or a fast trip to the doctor's office. "The average person over age 65 has five chronic illnesses," she said. "We need to view health care in a new way, so that we learn to live with our disabilities." Many people adopt lifestyles that accommodate their disabilities, she noted, and that's something we will all eventually need to do as we age.

Gueldner said she looks forward to her tenure as dean at the Decker School of Nursing and to upholding the commitment she has made by coming to Binghamton University and living in the Binghamton community. "People in Binghamton have fierce pride for, a love of and a commitment to their community," she observed. "It shows everywhere that people here pull together to make things work."

-- Jennie M. Orton

Roots in family and farming

Gueldner was raised on a farm in eastern rural Tennessee, where her family survived the hardships of the early 20th century through subsistence farming. Elements of that hardscrabble life, and especially the values inherent in it, persisted through Gueldner's own childhood. She and other family members and friends documented the daily reality of that life in a self-published volume, A Christmas Collection of Family Stories: Gathered by Sarah and Dale. "We wanted our children and grandchildren to know and revere their grandparents, our parents and their legacy," she said. The collection of essays and anecdotes both

chronicles family history and provides a glimpse of the realities of rural farming life. In one essay, Gueldner wrote: "Half the year we 'put out,' 'tended,' 'harvested,' and 'put up' almost all of our own vegetables like corn, green beans, tomatoes, Irish and sweet potatoes, and maybe carrots, beets, turnips, and turnip greens, so they wouldn't go to waste and so we'd have them to eat in the winter time. For years, until freezing became an option, we canned corn, green beans, tomatoes, and beets, but we always just dug up the potatoes and laid them out on the cool dirt ledges in the basement." -- Jennie M. Orton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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