An NP with “Quick Rapport”—Prof. Malinda Whitlow Earns 2025 Armstead Robinson Faculty Award
Whether strapping on a blood pressure cuff in the cozy confines of a mobile health van, chatting lightly as she expertly pricks a patient’s finger at a pop-up clinic at a local community center, or demonstrating how to assess heart and lung sounds in the simulation lab or classroom before her students, associate professor Malinda Whitlow is utterly at home.
Celebrated for her warmth and “quick and easy rapport,” when Whitlow receives the 2025 Armstead Robinson Faculty Award at the UVA Equity Center on Apr. 24, it will be the latest applause for the clinician-educator in the prime of her still-young career.
“She is an unwavering source of encouragement. I am grateful for her influence in my life.”
Doctoral student Melissa Neck, RN to BSN graduate and a labor and delivery nurse
Colleagues admire Whitlow for her natural wisdom and leadership, the myriad places and spaces where she faithfully shows up, and her determination to elevate the nursing profession beyond academia by ensuring students’ deeper understanding of policymaking and advocacy processes. Students, in turn, laud Whitlow for her open classrooms, her personal check-ins, and for her thoughtful, scholarly approach to teaching social determinants of health and how they collide with healthcare—and how nurses can help mitigate them through their care.
It begins, say her students, by creating safe places to talk in class.
“Dr. Whitlow’s classroom is a place where all students—whether they are studying Black history or not—feel seen, heard, and encouraged to participate in important conversations about race and identity,” said Grace Morris, an RN to BSN student and Woodbrook Elementary School nurse. “Her teaching approach is thoughtful, inclusive, and rooted in the belief that diversity matters, and her willingness to advocate for students’ success is unparalleled.”
If Whitlow's teaching and mentoring roles are expansive, her clinical roles are, too. She provides bi-monthly primary care from UVA Health’s new mobile health unit to community members who might not otherwise have it. She works at UVA’s Same Day Clinic and is quick to volunteer as a provider at community health fairs. As the School’s undergraduate program lead, she's involved in a dizzying array of activities to champion the nursing profession. She helps organize experiential events that offer Virginia middle- and high-schoolers a glimpse into nursing, routinely speaks and shares her story at recruitment events, attends “Days on the Lawn” to meet and greet new UVA undergraduates, and even takes students abroad and to policy events, including one in 2023 with President Joe Biden.
“She engages students in ways that will impact their education, clinical perspectives, and that ultimately shape their professional outlook as nurses,” said Randy Jones, associate dean for partner development and engagement.
“Her teaching approach is thoughtful, inclusive, and rooted in the belief that diversity matters, and her willingness to advocate for students’ success is unparalleled.”
Grace Morris, an RN to BSN student and Woodbrook Elementary School nurse
Prior to her tenure at UVA in 2019, Whitlow directed George Washington University’s accelerated BSN program and served as interim assistant dean of its undergraduate division. A Virginia Nurses Association “40 Under 40” awardee, Whitlow was lauded a UVA Health “Preceptor of the Year," was inducted into the Raven Society, and currently serves as president of Sigma Nursing Honor Society’s Beta Kappa chapter, which boasts more than 500 members.
The Robinson Faculty Award is named for the late Armstead Robinson, a beloved UVA history professor who oversaw development of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies. The Black Faculty and Staff Employee Resource Group at UVA bestows the award annually to a faculty member who has contributed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and who has had a positive impact on the Black experience at the University.
But all of Whitlow’s students and colleagues benefit from her warmth—and are “lucky and better for it,” said Marianne Baernholdt, the Pew Charitable Trusts Dean and Professor.
“Some people are just special because of who they are,” Baernholdt added, “in addition to all they accomplish. Malinda’s impacted many of us, including me, and I'm proud to call her a colleague and a member of our leadership team. I can think of no one more deserving of this honor.”
Added doctoral student Melissa Neck, a labor and delivery nurse, “She is an unwavering source of encouragement. I am grateful for her influence in my life.”
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