School of Nursing

Education

• PhD

Biosketch

Melinda M. Swenson has been certified as a Family Nurse Practitioner since 1980 and has taught nurse practitioners since then in both adult and family specialties. She developed, with Dr. Sherry Sims, the innovative Narrative Centered Curriculum used in the FNP Major at the IU School of Nursing. She has published and presented this unique curriculum nationally and internationally, highlighting modifications of Patient-Based Learning and other narrative approaches to teaching and learning. Her research interests include appreciative inquiry and other integrative strategies for curriculum planning and evaluation, the experience of living at risk for HuntingtonDisease, and nurse practitioner curricular concerns, focusing especially on reflective teaching and practice. She conducts and supervises research using qualitative methodologies, especially hermeneutics and phenomenology. She is currently Professor of Nursing and the Coordinator of the FNP major at Indiana University. She is a primary developer of the new DNP Program at IU School of Nursing. She maintains a clinical practice at the IU Health Center in Bloomington, specializing in College Health. She is active in the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties and the National League for Nursing, from whom she received the 2001 National Award for Excellence in Teaching. She will be inducted as a Fellow of the NLN Academy of Nursing Education in September, 2008. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

Selected Publications