Jane Beard (RN, MSN), nursing faculty at Front Range Community College’s Larimer campus, is the college’s faculty of the year.
She was honored at a meeting of the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education.
When Beard was in nursing school, a charismatic instructor told her, “You are going to make a great nurse.” She believed it—and now her goal is to be that instructor for FRCC’s students.
She thinks a lot about her responsibility to the patients that her students will eventually care for—which motivates her to graduate excellent nurses. She reminds her students that, “Patients live because of us.”
Beard came to FRCC after working as the nurse manager of intensive care at Creighton University, and subsequently teaching at the medical school there. (Creighton is also where she completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing. She then went on for a master’s degree in nursing education from Walden University.)
Now at FRCC since 2008, she is constantly learning, keeping abreast of new research and protocols for hospitals. Colleagues describe her as invested in the success of each and every student. Her students call Beard “compassionate, intelligent, gentle and funny”—and a teacher who really knows how to pick a student up when they’re struggling.
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