A Tale of Two Deans

Prior to Victoria Vaughan Dickson starting her tenure as dean of the School of Nursing, she sat down with her longtime colleague, former Dean Deborah Chyun, for a virtual event to introduce the community to the incoming leader. The two reflected on their individual and shared experiences, the accomplishments of Chyun’s deanship, and what’s next for UConn Nursing.

Deborah Chyun, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FAHA took the reins as dean of the School of Nursing in January 2018. In her time at the helm, Chyun led the school through many challenging times, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout her deanship, Chyun paved a pathway for leadership and innovation while increasing the number of students, faculty, and staff and strengthening its research, innovation, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Through these endeavors, she brought the national visibility of the school to new levels.
On Aug. 1, 2023, Chyun turned over the baton to her longtime colleague, Victoria Vaughan Dickson, Ph.D., RN, FAHA, FHFSA, FAAN. The school’s 11th dean previously served as the John W. Rowe Professor in Successful Aging at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, where she was also the assistant dean for research innovation and director of the Pless Center for Nursing Research.
“I have known Vicky for over 15 years, and I admire her work in self-care,” Chyun said during the virtual “Fireside Chat: A Conversation with the Deans,” held June 6, 2023. “She is an outstanding scholar and an excellent leader and mentor. I am so happy to turn the school over to someone that I know will take it to new heights.”
Dickson’s nursing career has spanned over four decades, beginning as a nurse’s aide in her small hometown in western Pennsylvania. “I began my professional career in Philadelphia as a medical-surgical nurse, in the 1980s. There was then an emerging focus on nurse practitioners and preparing them as a solution to the need for primary care providers,” Dickson said. “I trace my research focus and interest in cardiovascular disease to those early days. I wanted to keep patients out of the hospital and in their community, which is what inspired me to become a primary care nurse practitioner.”
For about 16 years, Dickson was the employee health director for the Cigna Corporation, headquartered in Connecticut. “We developed and implemented innovative programs that strived to improve the health and well-being of the working population and their families,” she said. “In doing so I honed my skills and gained great experience working within complex organizations and in working with interdisciplinary partners to solve problems.
“With that in mind, and with my clinical background, research questions started percolating, which is very common with nurse researchers, and that led me back to my Ph.D. I had a burning question around how I could be more effective in promoting the health and well-being of patients and their families with a focus on heart disease and cardiovascular risks, which contribute to many health issues in today’s world.” This focus has been Dickson’s clinical practice and influenced her research career.
For the past 15 years, Dickson has been at the NYU Meyers College of Nursing in New York City. “I have had great opportunities to conduct research internationally as well as locally and regionally. I have gained great experience in developing partnerships, and I am excited to take these skills and integrate my clinical practice and experience as an educator into this position as the next dean at UConn Nursing,” Dickson said. “I think it is an ideal community for me, and I am really excited about what is going on and the work that Dean Chyun has done. Dean Chyun has been a mentor throughout my career. UConn is an ideal place for me to address an important nursing priority and passion of mine — to prepare the next generation of nurses. Everyone at UConn has been so welcoming, and it is a great honor to join your community as dean.”
Chyun and Dickson are both extremely active in the American Heart Association, each with a strong career focus on cardiovascular health. Both, too, are self-proclaimed lifelong learners. Both Chyun and Dickson have worked with world-renowned researcher Barbara Riegel from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. “Dr. Riegel is an outstanding mentor, and it is wonderful to see Dean Dickson carrying on her tradition,” Chyun said. Dickson acknowledged that the ideal model for a nursing school is to support international research for undergraduate nursing students and pre-doctoral fellows, as well as for faculty to have outside collaborations. “This is something I am also very proud of,” she said, “developing partnerships and collaborations in our research teams with clinical faculty, nurses, and those in other disciplines and hospital systems.”
Dickson has been funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to prepare and engage undergraduate nursing students from diverse backgrounds that are underrepresented in cardiovascular nursing. “We just finished the fourth year of the summer program. Each summer we bring together 10 to 12 undergraduate nursing students from across the United States, including from historically Black colleges and universities. In this 10-week hybrid program, we hold didactic sessions via Zoom; students partner with faculty in faculty-mentored research experiences,” she explained. “We want students to get excited about nursing research and engaged in research early in their careers.
“I am so proud of this project, and it means so much to me because we are preparing the next generation of cardiovascular nurse researchers. I am excited to see how we can grow the project in the future here at UConn,” she said.
When Chyun came to UConn there was not another cardiovascular researcher until Nancy Redeker, Ph.D., RN, FAHA, FAAN, senior associate dean for research and scholarship, who had previously been a well-known nurse scientist at Yale, joined the school.
“Dr. Redeker has studied the effects of insomnia in heart failure, so I think that it is really something that that we can build on with many opportunities to think about cardiovascular disease across the life course now with Dean Dickson here,” Chyun said. “There is also a rich pool of faculty looking at children and maternal health. We certainly have connections to UConn Health and other clinical sites, as well as building on our leadership in innovation and our strong collaboration with engineering. These will allow us to be creative and address cardiovascular disease and other health issues, especially in those who experience very poor outcomes.”
In addition to her previous experiences working with Chyun and Redeker, Dickson also had the opportunity before becoming dean to work with other UConn faculty through her leadership in the Eastern Nursing Research Society (ENRS). “Meeting UConn students at conferences with the expertise and the resources they contributed was phenomenal,” she said. “I think what struck me when I was meeting both formally and informally with the UConn nursing community, including faculty, nurses, staff, and alumni, even when I was touring the hospital, is that UConn’s nurses have the reputation for exceptional preparation. They are sought after locally, regionally, and across the nation.
“I also was impressed by the willingness of faculty to talk with me about working together to leverage the goals of the school. I think that was a key selling point for me: being able to feel a part of this community that clearly is working together to achieve the goals that have been put forth,” Dickson said.
“We do we have fabulous students, and we have a lot of them!” noted Chyun. For fall 2023, the UConn School of Nursing had a record 2,874 applicants.
“Applications have been going up every single year, and our incoming class will be 170 students in Storrs — almost a 100% increase over our normal class size. We are doing everything possible to address the nursing shortage, as well as the nursing faculty shortage at the graduate level. With this comes the challenge to support these students,” Chyun said. “We need capacity. We need the resources to prepare them, and we need to prepare nurses from diverse backgrounds to have those experiences and skills with knowledge to address the issues facing diverse populations.”
Dickson acknowledged the importance of the structural and social determinants of health, which are an important part of her research. She is committed to building the workforce, as well as maintaining and sustaining the nursing workforce. Dickson recognizes the impact of the pandemic, but beyond that the trends where nurses are not only leaving the workforce, but the profession all together. She sees this as a major challenge, as well as an opportunity for our profession to work towards preparing nursing students through curricular efforts and through clinical experiences partnering with our community.
When asked to reflect on the most challenging experiences of her deanship, Chyun said: “I think people would probably think that I would immediately say COVID, but the greatest challenge by far — and we’re still feeling its effects — was the racial incident we had at the school in October of 2019. During that time there was a great deal of pain and anger on the part of the students. We have moved forward from that thanks to the leadership of Dr. Maryann Perez-Brescia, our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) director. “The efforts that she has taken in developing our external advisory committee, which has been so loyal and so helpful in bringing us forward on this path, are instrumental,” Chyun said. “We are now the most diverse school at UConn, with more than 50 percent of our students who identify as either Hispanic or Black. We still have work to do; we continue to work very hard every day. As a school, we have learned many important lessons and will remain committed to diversity in all its many forms.”
And while COVID-19 provided substantial challenges, keeping the students, faculty, and staff safe was her top priority, Chyun said, followed by ensuring students were able to get the clinical experiences that they needed to graduate. The “fabulous” faculty quickly pivoted to online teaching. Despite being physically separated, students, faculty, and staff worked together and supported one another, allowing the school to meet this unique challenge and emerge from this period in a very strong position.
The deans also discussed the future: upcoming budgetary challenges, philanthropic giving, our amazing alumni board, and the school’s loyal alumni and donors. “We are committed to providing and continuing to provide the best nursing education that anybody could get in the state and beyond,” says Chyun. “With new programs and collaborations with other schools across the University, as well as with our clinical partners, the school will continue to grow and be a leader in nursing education and innovation across the state and the nation.”
While recognizing the progress that the school has made on many fronts thanks to the dedication of the students, faculty and staff, Chyun also acknowledged that there were several personal goals that she was not able to achieve during her time as dean that she hopes will be prioritized in the future. The first was to expand the school’s research presence across the entire state.
“The school has exceptional research faculty who study problems of great importance for the people of the state,” Chyun said. “I am confident that under the leadership of Dean Dickson and Dr. Redeker this will be accomplished.” Secondly, while the school benefits from strong philanthropic giving, Chyun said, “a nursing school of UConn’s stature needs endowed chairs to attract and retain the highest level of faculty. Yet, the school does not have a single endowed chair. These chairs bring a level of distinction to the school and University, as well as to the faculty member.
“Endowed chairs are much more than a naming opportunity, honoring the person or persons it is named after and making a strong statement about the belief that the school and its faculty are worthy of this recognition, which UConn School of Nursing and its faculty certainly are,” Chyun said.
Chyun concluded the session with an excerpt from the closing remarks from the high school valedictory address given by the school’s first dean, Carolyn Ladd Widmer, on June 6, 1919 — 104 years to the day of the deans’ conversation:
“We must save lives, help the helpless, safeguard humanity’s interests, and blaze a path of light. We must strive upward toward the goal of a better, nobler world. That goal is not easy of attainment. ... Toward that high goal, toward this lofty mission, we are turning our faces now. We have reached the foothills; we are facing the ascent before us. The climb will be steep, but we shall not falter or turn back. We are looking toward the future, and it is ourselves who shall determine what the future is to be … So, we look forward with hope and resolve into the future’s brightening way. Far over the distant mountains the sun is just rising, touching our foothills with its rays … With the morning sun upon our faces and morning sunshine in our hearts, let us press upward, striving to attain our mountain tops, to bring in the dawn and morning sunshine of a new and better world.”

This article was originally published in the Fall 2023 issue of Unison.pdf