Faculty Profiles

Dr. Sunny Cheng

Chieh (Sunny) Cheng, RN, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor of the Nursing and Healthcare Leadership program at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her clinical background is in psychiatric and mental health nursing. As a nursing scientist, her program of research is in the promoting the mental health of individuals, families, and communities through early prevention. She is a co-investigator on interdisciplinary research teams focusing on understanding the experiences of individuals and families living with first episode psychosis and to develop personalized approaches that maximize health and well-being for individuals across life span and diverse populations.

Denise Drevdahl

Denise Drevdahl conducts research in the areas of public/community health nursing, bias in healthcare providers, cultural competence, and health disparities.

Dr. Robin Evans-Agnew

Areas of scholarship: Emancipatory leadership/followership and environmental justice nursing. In this work I am particularly interested in anti-racist and feminist methodologies for structural transformation. I work with school nurses, public health nurses and other public health professionals in the south sound area and statewide on environmental justice issues such as asthma, adverse childhood experiences, climate change, and air pollution. I am a nationally recognized expert in the visual research method of photovoice. I have multi-year experience in applications of this method within a local community-based participatory research study with Latinas with children with asthma. I have an established partnership with south sound healthcare/nursing educators to mitigate the long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences in the next generation of healthcare leaders/followers.

Dr. Katie Haerling

In addition to her faculty appointment at the University of Washington Tacoma School of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership, Dr. Haerling has served as a Pro Tem Member of the State of Washington Department of Health Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission. She is a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) and an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars Program. Dr. Haerling’s research examining the reliability and validity of data produced using observation-based simulation participant performance assessment instruments is widely cited in the literature. Her ongoing research comparing the effectiveness and cost-utility of different experiential and simulation-based learning activities continues to contribute to the body of knowledge informing best practices in healthcare education. Her research mission is to help identify the most effective and efficient ways to prepare the next generation of healthcare professionals and contribute to the evidence-base supporting better healthcare education. She believes improving healthcare providers' education will support improved healthcare and a healthier nation and world.

Dr. Susan Johnson

Dr. Johnson [or Susan Johnson] does research primarily on the topic of workplace bullying and incivility among nurses. She views the problem holistically, and focuses on environmental, organizational and leadership factors that contribute to these behaviors.

Dr. Sharon Laing

Dr. Laing is trained as a developmental/health psychologist and conducts research that address health promotion and chronic disease prevention in low-resourced and economically disadvantaged communities. She is a health disparities researcher, and her scholarship is designed to support underserved communities in gaining access into existing healthcare systems. Dr. Laing’s work also explores a re-imagining of digital healthcare technologies to be more tailored to and maximally supportive of marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

Dr. Patsy Maloney

My area of research is nursing professional development.  Nursing professional development is a specialty and the nurses that practice the specialty are called nursing professional development practitioners. They are also known by a variety of other names such as clinical educators, educators, and staff development educators. NPD practitioners do not teach students but teach and develop other nurses and other health care providers in the practice setting. My two current research projects are: Exploring current and future nursing professional development (NPD) practice and Multi-Site NPD leader competency determination study.
 
Exploring current and future nursing professional development practice is a qualitative study that collects data on current and future NPD practice to inform the revision of the NPD scope and standards of practice.  The multi-site NPD leader competency study’s purpose is to identify the competencies needed to successfully lead professional development across a multisite system. This knowledge will promote the development of education and other tools to facilitate successful role transition and integration of the multi-site NPD leader.
 
In my role as scholar and teacher at UWT, I share my passion for NPD with students.  I have worked with students who have designed educational activities for a variety of different practice settings. Currently one of my students is designing an online educational activity to on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for NICU. Another student has just completed presenting an educational activity that she designed on worker-on-worker violence at a virtual national conference with over 3000 participants.  If you like teaching and developing other nurses and healthcare worker, check out nursing professional development.  You can find research on nursing professional development in the Journal for Nurses in Professional Development and in the Journal for Continuing Education in Nursing.

Dr. David Reyes

David Reyes, DNP, MPH, RN, PHNA-BC, is currently Interim Dean and tenured Associate Professor in the School of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership at the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) with adjunct appointments in the Schools of Nursing and Public Health at UW Seattle. His teaching and scholarship are grounded in the determinants of health and health equity to improve population health outcomes that emphasizes community engagement and participation.

Dr. Reyes’ professional nursing experience includes population/public health and acute care, and prior to joining the faculty at UWT in 2014, he was a Health Services Administrator in the Community Health Services Division at the Department of Public Health – Seattle & King County. Currently, Dr. Reyes is a member of the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA), former chair of the APHA’s Public Health Nursing Section, and a past president of the Washington State Public Health Association. He has served on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) National Advisory Committee for Academic Progression in Nursing, RWJF’s Public Health Nursing Workforce Advisory Committee, and the Institute of Medicine’s Standing Committee on Family Planning.

Dr. Reyes is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Society of Nursing, Psi Chapter-at-Large and Alpha Chapter. In 2017, he received the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA) Marguerite Cobb Public Health/Community Health Nurse Award, and in 2021 with WSNA’s Ethics and Human Rights Award. He was awarded UWT’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award in 2020. Dr. Reyes holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice (2013), and Masters’ degrees in Nursing (2002) and Public Health (2002) from the University of Washington Seattle. He received his Bachelor of Science in Nursing with a minor in history from Seattle University (1983), and is board certified in Advanced Public Health Nursing.

Dr. Christine Stevens

Dr. Christine Stevens is an associate professor in the School of Nursing and Healthcare. As an activist-scholar, she uses community-based research to develop strategies to address food insecurity and homelessness among college students. Her latest research explores how COVID 19 affected UWT students and historically marginalized populations in Pierce Country.

Dr. Weichao Yuwen

Dr. Yuwen's research focuses on promoting health and wellbeing among marginalized children and their family caregivers. Her team is currently developing and testing two technology-enabled health interventions: Sleep Innovations for Preschoolers with Arthritis - SIPA (https://depts.washington.edu/sipa/) and Caring for Caregivers Online - COCO (https://cocobot.care/).