Enhancing Faculty Knowledge and Skills: Culturally Diverse and Underrepresented Students

The Family Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant program has a long history of admitting a high percentage of students from cultural backgrounds historically underrepresented in the health professions and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.  The average rate of attrition of all students for all reasons in the last five graduating classes has been 14%.  However, when we analyzed the academic reasons for attrition, we discovered evidence of disparity between students who are from culturally diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds and those who are not.  Fifty percent of students who withdrew or decelerated from the FNP/PA Program did so for academic reasons. However, the rate among students from underrepresented minority (URM) and disadvantaged backgrounds is much higher than that of majority and non-disadvantaged students.  In the classes of 2006-2010, the rate of academic attrition for URM and disadvantaged students was 75%, compared with 38.5% among majority and non-disadvantaged students.  In order to increase retention overall, and in these target populations in particular, the FNP/PA Program faculty collaborated with the School of Humanities, Arts, & Cultural Studies, Center for Translational Health faculty to develop an interprofessional faculty development curriculum focused on supporting the education of culturally diverse and disadvantaged students.  Transnational Health faculty and multilingual education master educators conducted two faculty development workshops focused on methods and techniques designed to improve learning of culturally diverse and underrepresented students.  Additionally, the group held two sets of student focus groups, one before and one after the first faculty development workshop. There was a significant decrease in student attrition after these workshops, particularly in underrepresented students.