Former Academy President and Dean Ken White Delivers Bice Lecture
American Academy of Nursing immediate past president and dean emeritus of MGH Institute of Health Professions' School of Nursing Kenneth R. White will deliver the School of Nursing's annual Bice Lecture Oct. 3 with an hourlong talk titled, "Following What Matters."
"Following What Matters"
2024 Bice Lecture with
Kenneth R. White, PhD, APRN-BC, FACHE, FADLN, FAAN
October 3, 12-1 PM
Claude Moore Medical Education Building, room 3110
The talk marks a homecoming for White, who earned a post-master's certificate from the School in 2013 and served as an associate dean at the School before assuming the deanship of MGH Institute of Health Professions' nursing school in 2021 through 2024.
"I continue to be fascinated by and interested in what distinguishes those who identify a purpose and how they do something to turn it into reality," White explained.
White's lecture, based in part on the mattering research of colleague and friend Julie Haizlip, will offer him a platform to share stories of nursing students and colleagues he's admired as well as his own personal and professional trajectory.
With more than 50 years’ experience in healthcare organizations across clinical, administrative, governance, and consulting capacities, White began his career as a high school orderly in his Oklahoma hometown hospital and pursued a career in hospital administration as his first professional career with Mercy Health Services before his pivot into nursing and academia. He directed the health administration master’s programs at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he was also the inaugural Charles P. Cardwell Jr. Professor of Health Administration and, later, the Sentara Healthcare Professor before arriving as an associate dean at UVA in mid-2013, where he remained until 2021.
During his tenure at UVA, White held the UVA Health Endowed Professorship in Nursing along with joint appointments in the McIntire School of Commerce, the Darden School of Business, and the UVA School of Medicine. He was elected to the American Academy of Nursing board in 2017, won the Gold Medal Award from the American College of Healthcare Executives in 2019, and, later that year, was elected Academy president-elect. White was named dean and professor of the MGH Institute of Health Professions School of Nursing in Boston in 2021, the same year he assumed the Academy presidency. He remained Academy president through fall 2023, and MGH nursing school dean through 2024.
In addition to an active clinical practice as a palliative care nurse practitioner at UVA Health, White was the founding chair of the LGBTQ Forum of the American College of Healthcare Executives and earned VCU School of Nursing’s Outstanding Nurse Alumnus Award for 2021. In 2024, he earned both the DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award and was named a Luminary Fellow (FADLN) by the National Black Nurses Association for his more than 30 years’ commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
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Continuing education provided by UVA Health.