Keynotes

KeyNote Biography

• Dr. Marianne Hattar-Pollara is professor and the associate dean for research and graduate programs at Azusa Pacific University in California. Her three decades of academic and professional services have significantly contributed to the knowledge base of women’s health at both the national and international levels. She is recognized for her expertise, research and innovations in women’s health, particularly that of immigrant women. Her research and publications examine cross cultural and global women’s health issues and international nursing. At Azusa, she has developed and achieved full accreditation for the Nursing Ph.D. program. Previously, she held a faculty position at University of California Los Angeles, a joint clinical nurse specialist/lecturer position at the University of California Irvine Medical Center, a researcher and clinician position at the University of California San Francisco and a faculty and interim chair position of the Masters’ program at Dominguez Hill California State University. She holds a doctoral degree from the University of California, San Francisco. She received her master degree in psychiatric nursing from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN)) and chairs the Expert Panel of the Global Nursing and Health of the American Academy of Nursing. She serves as a member of the Board of Director of the Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology and is a Fulbright research scholar on women’s health

• Prof Marlene Viljoen is a nurse by profession and specialized in community health care nursing, which was also the field of research for the Ph D she obtained. She is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the North-West University in South Africa. She has been a member of the South African Nursing Council for the last decade, and holds the position of Deputy Vice President of the Council for the last four years.

• Dr. Callister is a professor of nursing at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, United States of America where she is taught for the past twenty years. She was a Fulbright Scholar to the Russian Federation and serves on the Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology International Advisory Council. A fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, she is the co-chair of the Global Nursing and Health Expert Panel. She serves on the March of Dimes National Nurses Advisory Council and the March of Dimes Bioethics Council. She is president of the BYU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the National Collegiate Honor Society.

   

  For the past twenty years, she has conducted cross cultural studies of childbearing women in North and Central America, the Middle East, Scandinavia, Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and the Peoples Republic of China. She has published and presented widely on global health and nursing, focusing on maternal/child health. She serves on the editorial board of MCN: The American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing and the Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing. Dr. Callister is the recipient of the 2007 National League for Nursing Excellence in Education Award and the 2007 Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nursing (AWHONN) Distinguished Service Award

• Julia Aucoin, DNS, RN-BC, CNE has been working in professional development and nursing education for over twenty five years.  As both an academic and a practice educator, she employs creative learning strategies, to make learning fun and make it stick.  Currently she is  an independent consultant with the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Institute of Credentialing Innovation working with Magnet and Accreditation processes and employed as an Associate Professor of Nursing at Winston-Salem and Kaplan Universities, and is working with both undergraduate and graduate students.  Julie maintains a consulting practice as well, NCLEX performance improvement, focusing on computer-based instruction, and accreditation issues for educators.  Julie’s nursing degrees are all from Louisiana State University Health Science Center and she has taught in Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina