KTH Consulting

We are in the middle of the third year of the “Teacher-Scholar Project” which Kathy designed and customized to meet our specific needs and requirements. The goals of this project have been to provide ways for faculty to turn their teaching into scholarship, to create a faculty community that supports scholarship through active collaboration, and to eventually tip our culture toward a community of scholarly caring. I am very happy and pleased to be able to report that we are well on our way to meeting every one of the goals we set for ourselves originally and have even added new goals as the experience has evolved.

Kathy, with her creativity and her gentle, knowing ways has helped us to coalesce further as a faculty group and has inspired all of us – novice, mid-career, and experienced faculty members – to “Work Smart” and turn what we do on a daily basis into scholarship. She has helped us to refine and re-affirm exactly what it is we have to offer the world as an NLN- designated Center of Excellence in Nursing Education. We owe Kathy Heinrich a great debt for helping us to move forward on this incredible journey!

Melinda Granger Oberleitner, RN, DNS, APRN, CNS
Professor and Department Head, Associate to the Dean,
Department of Nursing, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
NLN Center of Excellence in Nursing Education, January 25, 2008

Dr. Kathleen Heinrich presented two sessions at our annual education conference. In advance of these presentations, she worked with our association by telephone and email to determine areas in which we saw needs, and then tailored her sessions specifically to our members' interests and our specialty area. Her keynote presentation on "From Stressful to Zestful" elicited comments from attendees such as, "Been there!! Wish I had this information long ago. I plan on using it ASAP." In addition, Dr. Heinrich presented a workshop entitled, "You Can Do It: Writing for Publication." As with many nursing associations for clinical nurses working in the field, we have found that empowering our members with the confidence to write for our newsletter and peer-reviewed journal is challenging. Member response was positive, "This session was very encouraging for anyone who has ever considered writing an article for publication. I have an idea that I will try to put in place now that I have had some direction." Dr. Heinrich's participation extended beyond the day of her presentations, as she is now writing an article for our newsletter based on our member's responses to questions she asked them during her sessions -- serving as a demonstration of "writing about what you do."

Mary Alice Willis, RN, MSN, Executive Director, Developmental Disabilities Nurses Association, July 2008

Kathy's workshop, "From Stress to Zest: How to Boost the Zest in Your Workplace," opened the lines of communication between mid-level managers and upper management in our home health care agency. As one of the managers, I have unique insight into the challenges that our managers face. Kathy partnered with me in providing a truly customized workshop. Through her guidance the managers were able to set a clear vision about how we were going to relate to each other to decrease the joy-stealing in our office and we set ground rules to increase the zest in our workplace. The managers felt so strongly about the work that we did in the workshop, we spent the next two hours exploring solutions of how to bring zest to our workplace.

The greatest gain from Kathy's workshop was an agreement between all the managers that we did not want to let the work go, we wanted to commit to keeping the zest in our workplace. And as a result we have all agreed to meet again to talk about keeping the zest in January. Many thanks to Kathy, her facilitation has truly impacted our workplace in many positive ways.

Charlotte Steniger, RN MSN, Director of Staff Development, Interim Health Care of Hartford, Hartford, CT.

Great focus! Wonderful encouragement! Organized structure to produce results!

Participant, Nursing Spectrum Career Fair, Burlington, MA, March 26, 2008

Wow, as a seasoned university professor, it is not often that I have my socks blown off in an academic workshop, especially one on the topic of professional publications and presentations.

Two years ago, Dr. Kathy Heinrich caused our eyes to glitter with her inspired and motivating faculty workshop about turning our teaching passions into scholarship. She infused our faculty with an ardent enthusiasm and a fiery confidence—and one by one, small group by small group; we turned our passions into professional publications and presentations.

When Kathy returned to Boise State for an encore performance this past month, she took our faculty to new heights by introducing us to partnership skills designed to move our scholarly collaborations to the next level. In her engaging, affirming, and genuine way, Kathy created a safe circle for faculty to share their thoughts and feelings about publishing and presenting—and gently helped faculty shed our ‘imposter syndrome’ while encouraging us to color outside the lines to design and disseminate the work we love so much. Kathy’s unique ability to stimulate excitement for an often daunting subject is unparalleled. She is simply the best at her craft.

Cynthia Clark, RN, PhD, Professor, Boise State University, Boise Idaho, February 8, 2008