Rhonda Alterson

Assistant Professor of Nursing

Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit?  It is one of the Fine Arts:  I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts. ~Florence Nightingale

I began my nursing career while I was still in high school.  Back then, the teenage volunteers were called Candy Stripers because of the pink-striped uniforms we wore.  We were only allowed to pass fresh water and converse with the patients.  I wanted to do more so I became a certified nurses’ aide.  Wanting to do still more, I became a licensed practical nurse, and finally a registered nurse.  By working in all of these areas, I became a stronger nurse – one who knew what everyone had to do.

Thirty years later, I am still a nurse but now I teach in the nursing department at New Mexico State University in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  In 2008, I began teaching as a College Instructor. I soon realized I needed to know more about theories of teaching and learning.  To meet this need, I enrolled in the online Masters in Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.  There I took classes that were lively and highly enlightening.

I received the Masters of Education in Instructional Technologies and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Nursing in 2010. I teach the Certified Nursing Assistant classes (OENA 101) and Medical Terminology (Nurs 150). My content is delivered both online through NMSUA’s Content Management System – Blackboard CE 8 and face-to-face.  I like both methods because they each offer different advantages to the students.

As a teacher, I believe we are more than the sum of our parts and feel that collaborative learning is more positive and engaging than a strict lecture style.  I don’t believe students should be expected to carry “mini-libraries” around in their heads.  I prefer them to know how and where to obtain information rather than have to memorize it.