After sharing her business acumen with the School of Nursing and Health Studies for the past three years, Andrea Rodgers will have the chance to contribute her talents internationally—as a Fulbright Specialist. “I thought I’d never get accepted because it’s so selective and prestigious,” said Rodgers, the school’s senior director of accreditation and assessment. But after receiving an email announcing her acceptance into the program, reality struck. “I was jumping up and down. I was really excited,” she recalled. “Then I was like OK, now I’ve got to refocus. I’ve got work to do.”
Like the well-known Fulbright Scholar Program, the competitive Fulbright Specialist Program aims to provide an avenue for knowledge and expertise to be shared in an international environment by pairing highly qualified US academics and professionals with host institutions in approximately 150 countries. Where Fulbright Scholars spend anywhere from 2 to 12 months focusing on teaching and research, Fulbright Specialists take part in shorter project-based exchanges ranging from just 2 to 6 weeks.
Asked what she thinks set her application apart, Rodgers answered, “Maybe the breadth of my work experience, some of the projects I’ve done. I haven’t stayed on a single avenue. I’ve gone on a lot of side streets along the way, so my avenue is more of a boulevard at this point.”
A native of Tennessee, Rodgers moved to South Florida just a month before Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992. Before joining the University of Miami in October 2022, she spent more than 20 years working at Florida International University. “I taught undergraduate courses and one of the graduate courses for business statistics. I was the director of two graduate programs at one point,” she explained. “We were looking at data management learning outcomes assessments as the landscapes were changing at that time.”
Degrees in business and management information systems led Rodgers to her present career. “I helped develop the business analytics major at FIU and ended up teaching predominantly in that,” she said. “Over the last two-plus decades, all of the work I have done in the classroom and administratively aligns with what I’m doing with accreditation, assessment and program development. I’ve managed and run programs, so I know all the different sides of the dice. I can see how the bigger picture fits into the strategic plan, the learning outcomes for the entire program, for example. It’s important to take that step back to see how the whole puzzle fits together.”
This December, for example, Rodgers will present “Coming Together as One: Two Types of Assessment,” at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges Annual Meeting, the University of Miami’s accrediting body, addressing how she and school leaders are blending the learning outcome and competency-based assessments accreditors require in professional programs like nursing.
“There is a way to blend the two together so we’re not doing two separate processes. We can make things more efficient yet gain the maximum benefits from both by combining those efforts,” she said. “We see what’s working and what’s not. Obviously, what’s not working it’s time to fix. Even if it is working, sometimes there’s a better way to do it as technology evolves.”
Rodgers loves analyzing data of all kinds to achieve a “multifaceted view” of how a program is doing. “Data is central. It’s having the evidence to support and inform your decisions,” she said. “The real goal is using assessment to determine if our students are really learning.” It's that passion and expertise Rodgers looks forward to bringing to an institution abroad as part of her Fulbright experience.
“We are very proud of Andrea’s achievement,” said Rodgers’ supervisor, Marina Parada, the school’s senior executive director of strategic initiatives. “This opportunity to gain international experience, learn about other cultures, and share her expertise with colleagues abroad has tremendous potential as well to benefit her work here at the school.”
