Maria S. White, MSN, BA, RN
Drawing on her clinical expertise as an adult surgical critical care nurse, Maria S. White applies her clinical knowledge to shape the future generations of nursing. With her experience in teaching multiple levels of undergraduate nursing students, she assists entry-to-practice/pre-licensure students build key competencies in clinical learning, collaborates on entry-to-practice curriculum design, studies ways to improve simulation education and classroom content delivery, and serves as the Course Director of “Nursing of the Young and Middle-Aged Adults (NURS2450). Additionally, Maria has strong interest in how the climate crisis and environmental factors influence health, health outcomes, and nurses’ role to support healthy living.
“My goal is to motivate future nurses in understanding and implementing high quality nursing care from both a global and individualized perspective. It is not about seeing the individual at one part of the health care setting continuum. More so, it is vital to support and integrate individuals we care for in the maintenance of health and wellness in everyday life.”
Education
- DNP, Executive Leadership, University of Pennsylvania , 2025
- MSN, Thomas Jefferson University , 2014
- BSN, Thomas Jefferson University , 2010
- BA, Temple University , 2009
Teaching
As a Clinical Course Director, Ms. White fosters student engagement in active learning classrooms and experiential learning environments, implements multimodal pedagogical techniques, develops course evaluations, and creates continuity among didactic, clinical, and simulation learning.
Collaborating with school leaders, Ms. White also assists in developing and revising entry-to-practice curricula, including pre-licensure tracks such as Master’s Entry to Professional Nursing (MPN/MPEN), accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN), and traditional 4-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).
Additionally, she co-teaches in NURS 5350-005: Comparative Health Systems which utilizes a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Model. This course structure embodies both COIL and a multinational virtual cultural exchange collaborating with nursing schools across the globe. Students and teachers explore the role of nursing and midwifery’s response to the climate crisis and how climate influences health.
Research
As principal investigator for “Watch & Learn,” Ms. White and her co-investigators explored the impact of video demonstrations on student performance in the simulation lab. This project, funded by Penn Nursing, created instructional videos for nursing students that introduce them to psychomotor skills that are foundational for clinical judgment. In addition to psychomotor skills, videos included Penn Nursing- specific medication safety protocols which were unlike other instructional videos found on the Internet. This project assisted in the implementation of supplemental skills videos in the simulation curriculum to advance student psychomotor skills acquisition.
Under a second grant from Penn Nursing, Ms. White was the project leader of an Innovative Technology and Teaching Grant, designed to explore how large groups of nursing students perform when taking classroom examinations electronically. This “Go Green Test with a Machine” project launched in the Fall of 2016. Ms. White examined the full integration of technology and testing in a classroom with 98 nursing students which informed further use of electronic testing school wide.
Selected Career Highlights
- Recipient, Teaching Faculty Mentorship Award, 2022-2023
- Recipient, Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, 2021
- Recipient, Unsung Hero Award, BHS Department, 2020
- Recipient, Most Valuable Professor (MVP) Award, Penn Women’s Basketball Team, 2019
- Recipient, Student Nurses at Penn (SNAP) Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2015-16
- Member, National League of Nursing
- Member, American Association of Critical Care Nurses
Related News
-
A Critical Role
Critical care unit patients teetering on the edge of life and death need the best on their side. The urgency of these high-stakes environments requires nurses who have been prepared to be highly responsive critical-thinkers, with tremendous attention to detail and aptitude for an ever-evolving discipline. Read on to learn why Penn Nursing-educated nurses have the advantage and how Penn Nursing has shaped, and continues to lead, the profession.
Story By Janine White
Photography By Margo Reed -
Bright Ideas
A fascinating course for Nurse Practitioners emphasizes design-thinking and community engagement to help students see and solve real-life problems in underserved populations.
By Janine White -
The Preceptor Imperative
Every great nurse starts out as a student. And for every student, there’s a preceptor, that vital mentor who oversees care in clinical rotations, who passes on lessons learned and knowledge earned. But as the number of preceptors trends steadily downward, it’s past time to talk about just how vital the role really is.
By Janine White