Amber L. Vermeesch, Ph.D. ’11, M.S.N., FNP-C, RN, CNE, FACSM, FNAP, ANEF, FAANP, is an associate professor, the DNP-FNP Program Director, and Dr. Mary K. Kneedler Distinguished Scholar at the Western Carolina University School of Nursing in Asheville, North Carolina. She joined WCU with tenure in June 2025, but her first tenure came in 2018, as an associate professor at the University of Portland.
Vermeesch’s current research focus relates to nature-based well-being interventions. To that end, she recently completed the first cohort of Nature & Systems Institute’s Nature as Medicine Practitioner Training and Certification, and in 2024, she co-chaired the Global Outdoor Health Summit in San Antonio, Texas.
Like others interviewed, Vermeesch cited “mentoring students” as the most rewarding part of her position. “I love when I see the lightbulb go off in their head and they 'get it,’” she explained. In addition to teaching in the Family Nurse Practitioner program, she leads the Doctor of Nursing Practice program for Family Nurse Practitioners at WCU.
Her own Ph.D. preparation at the School of Nursing and Health Studies, she said, paved the way for tenure-track success. She credits two key ingredients of that success that she has carried with her throughout her career as her “highly honed critical thinking skills and the ability to be flexible and work collaboratively with others.”
Susana Barroso, Ph.D. ’16, RN, joined the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies nursing and simulation faculty the same year she earned her Ph.D. in nursing science. “That doctoral preparation supported my transition into academic roles that blend scholarship, educational leadership, and simulation innovation, and positioned me to lead and scale complex educational initiatives—ultimately aligning my career around simulation-based education as a strategy to improve workforce readiness, equity, and outcomes,” she said. “I still bleed orange and green.”
Today, 10 years later, Barroso is an associate professor of clinical at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, where she has been on faculty since leaving Miami in 2020. Last May, Barroso added UNC School of Medicine simulation educator to her duties and recently she was selected for the 2026 Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Leaders Network.
“My research focuses on advancing simulation-based education to strengthen health care training—particularly preparing learners to provide high-quality care in rural and underserved settings,” explained Barroso. “A central component of my current work is building a sustainable, curriculum-spanning simulation program that integrates intra- and interprofessional collaboration, bridges theory to practice, and improves clinical judgment, patient safety, and outcomes.”
Barroso is the program director/principal investigator on a three-year, $1.3 million the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) SET Grant: Closing the Gaps: Strengthening Nursing Education through Partnerships to Improve Care for Underserved and Rural Communities.
Her simulation projects include a “curriculum-wide simulation development, including creation of a multigenerational, multicultural family threaded across courses to address medical, psychological, and social drivers of health; expansion of standardized patient use and scenario deployment across multiple courses; and development of an inter-institutional/interprofessional scenario with regional partners,” she shared.
Other scholarship includes her work in communication and teamwork assessment, Latino health/cancer caregiver interventions, and engaged scholarship supporting international nursing education capacity-building.
Her innovation and compassion in “preparing the next generation of nurses to lead with empathy, equity, and excellence,” has left a lasting impression with many of her students, including Miami alumna Mariana Da Costa, B.S.N. ’07. “Dr. Barroso played a vital role in building the foundational skills I still carry with me 18 years later,” said Da Costa, a doctorally prepared nurse practitioner.
“My teaching emphasizes interactive, experiential learning that supports adult learners, prioritizes psychological safety, and builds competence through active practice, reflection, and application,” said Barroso.
Barroso’s global nursing impact has included helping nursing schools abroad, most recently in Belize and Dominica, establish and evaluate their simulation-based education programs. Whatever the location, Barroso identified creating high-impact experiential learning environments that help students translate knowledge into confident clinical action as the most rewarding part of her job. She also enjoys “building partnership-driven educational models that expand access and improve care for underserved and rural communities” and finds meaning in “collaborative, inclusive work that elevates student growth and strengthens communities through engagement and mentorship.”
Nurse scientist Adriana Arcia, Ph.D. ’11, RN, FAAN, is a full professor at the University of San Diego Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science. “I will be tenured in September 2026,” she said. “Over the last 10-plus years, my research focus has been on the use of information visualization to make it easier for patients, caregivers, and community members to understand health information.”
For the past few years, Arcia has taught informatics and health policy for nurses. She recently was part of a small team that designed the curriculum for a new online BSN-completion program, and she is developing a data visualization course for that program “to meet the quantitative inquiry core requirement,” she said. “Later I will be collaborating with a theatre colleague to build a course called Patient Stories, for the artistic inquiry requirement, in which nursing students will learn about theatre through depictions of the patient experience.” Arcia’s undergraduate background as a theater major informs her interest in the effort.
Asked what she loves most about academia, Arcia’s answer is decisive. “Mentorship is the most satisfying aspect of my job; I like being useful,” she said. It’s also a reflection of the experience she had as a graduate student herself, while at the University of Miami. “One of the biggest impacts that my time at UM had on me is that the then-Dean, Nena Peragallo, talked me up to the professor who was recruiting for the postdoc program at Columbia,” she recounted. “That ended up taking my career in the direction of visualization. The impact that small interaction ended up having on my career was an object lesson in the importance of networking and the ways we can promote the success of our mentees.”
