american association of colleges of nursing | the voice of academic nursing | Transform 2023 | Transform. connect. learn. lead

Program Agenda

Program subject to change.

Thursday, December 3 – Faculty Leadership Network (FLN) Program

This half-day program, held prior to Transform, is hosted by AACN’s Faculty Leadership Network (FLN), a network specifically created for faculty whose primary focus is teaching didactic and clinical courses. It provides opportunities to explore real-world issues, pose pedagogical questions, and exchange ideas related to teaching and curriculum in professional nursing education.

This is a separate event. Learn more and register for the program here.

December 3

Time	Session
12:00–5:00 p.m.	Registration Open
1:00–6:00 p.m.	Exhibitor Showcase Open Explore a dynamic showcase of innovative products, services, and solutions designed to support your school of nursing. Discover new resources and connect with potential strategic partners who can help address institutional challenges and advance your mission.
1:00–6:00 p.m.	Poster Showcase Open
1:00–1:45 p.m.	First-Time Attendee Meet & Greet Hosted by the AACN Transform Subcommittee
2:00–3:00 p.m.	Welcome and Opening Plenary Unleashing Greatness: The Transformative Power of Play, Optimism, and Creativity Join Kevin Carroll, renowned as the Katalyst, for an energizing session that explores how optimism, creativity, and play drive individual and organizational excellence. With a unique blend of youthful curiosity, deep understanding of the human spirit, and relentless competitive energy, Mr. Carroll inspires audiences to turn abstract ideas into concrete achievements. His extraordinary ability to spark meaningful change and his unwavering commitment to positivity and innovation empower everyone to ignite their own spark of greatness and embrace transformative growth.
3:30–4:30 p.m.	Plenary From Standards to Workforce Readiness: Advancing Safe, Equitable Care through Academic–Practice Partnerships Health systems are under increasing pressure to improve patient outcomes, reduce preventable harm, close equity gaps, and stabilize a nursing workforce facing growing complexity. This session will examine how The Joint Commission’s key initiatives and AACN’s focus on academic–practice partnerships can be aligned to strengthen quality, safety, workforce readiness, and equitable care delivery. Participants will explore a shared operating model that connects accreditation expectations and organizational quality priorities with competency-based education and transition-to-practice supports. Using a standards-to-competencies mapping approach, the session will highlight practical strategies for partnership governance, clinical placement models, preceptor development, and performance measurement. Attendees will leave with adaptable aims and measures to advance clinical readiness, safer care processes, and demonstrable progress toward equitable outcomes.
4:30–6:00 p.m.	AACN Networking Reception with Poster Presentations

December 4

Time	Session
6:00–7:00 a.m.	Running and Walking Groups (optional)
7:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.	Registration Open
7:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m.	Poster & Exhibitor Showcase Open
7:30–9:00 a.m.	Poster Presentations
7:30–9:00 a.m.	Breakfast with Exhibitors
7:30–8:30 a.m.	AACN Breakfast Forums Access, Connection, and Engagement Leadership Network (ACELN) Forum Join colleagues to meet, greet, and network with other ACELN members and potential members. You will have the opportunity to meet the steering committee and other members you may have only met or worked with virtually. Learn about the activities of ACELN and share thoughts on future engagement activities. All are welcome to attend. Faculty Leadership Network (FLN) Breakfast Forum Join colleagues to celebrate and contemplate future directions for the network. In addition to seeing old friends and meeting new ones, we identify issues of mutual interest and opportunities for engagement in an informal setting. All are welcome to attend.
7:30–8:30 a.m.	Essentials Champion Breakfast Meeting This informal gathering for breakfast and Essentials conversation is for each school’s one Dean-designated Essentials Champion. If your school’s Dean-designated Essentials Champion is not attending Transform, one individual from your school may represent the school and attend the breakfast session. Please come with questions, informal conversation, and plans to meet Dean-designated Essentials Champions from other schools! For designated Essentials Champions
7:30–8:30 a.m.	Solution Circles Join industry experts to consider strategies for addressing current challenges in academic nursing. In a collaborative and educational format, vendors will engage in interactive discussions to foster peer-to-peer dialogue and share new and innovative solutions. Disclaimer: AACN does not endorse any products, services, or views expressed by the presenters. AI in Action: Streamlining Item Generation and Student Remediation in Nursing Programs *Sponsored and presented by NurseAchieve* This session explores how AI is transforming nursing education through streamlined assessment development and personalized remediation. Attendees will see live demonstrations of NurseAchieve’s AI Item Writer and AI Remediation Tutor, showcasing how these tools support NCLEX alignment, reduce faculty workload, and enhance student outcomes. From Curriculum Mapping to Curriculum Intelligence *Sponsored and presented by Enflux* Most nursing programs still manage curriculum mapping in spreadsheets – static, hard to keep current, and disconnected from what actually happens in courses. This session introduces an interactive app where plans of study, SLOs, curriculum maps, and assignments live in one place and update in real time. Explore how faculty write program and course SLOs and map outcomes and assignments to competencies step by step. Discover how additional standards, like NONPF, COA, and AONL, can be layered onto the same map without extra spreadsheets. Attendees will leave with a practical model for Essentials implementation, continuous quality improvement, and CCNE accreditation readiness.
9:00 a.m.–12:45 p.m.	Podium Abstract Presentations AACN’s version of TED Talks! Each presenter has 15 minutes to present key insights, followed by 5 minutes for audience Q&A, making these sessions fast-paced and idea-rich.
12:30–1:30 p.m.	Solution Circles Join industry experts to consider strategies for addressing current challenges in academic nursing. In a collaborative and educational format, vendors will engage in interactive discussions to foster peer-to-peer dialogue and share new and innovative solutions. Disclaimer: AACN does not endorse any products, services, or views expressed by the presenters. From Compliance Burden to Strategic Advantage: Modernizing Clinical Education Sponsored and presented by PeopleGrove Every accreditation cycle, nursing programs face the same scramble: pulling placement records from one system, competency data from another, and Essentials mapping from a third, then manually stitching it all together into a defensible evidence package. This session reframes that work as an opportunity to build lasting infrastructure. Attendees will see how CORE by PeopleGrove consolidates clinical placement management, accreditation reporting, and student/preceptor/faculty competency tracking into a single system of record. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for evaluating program readiness and a clear sense of what a modernized clinical education workflow looks like.
12:45–2:00 p.m.	Lunch (on your own)
12:45–1:45 p.m.	NursingCAS Luncheon A Demonstration of AACN’s Student Application and Admissions Management Portal Discover NursingCAS, AACN’s student application service that provides member colleges with a free, online platform to efficiently manage all aspects of the admission process. Using this service, schools are able to streamline their recruitment operations, gain access to powerful enrollment management software, expand their customer service capacity, and reach a national applicant pool. Learn why nearly 300 colleges of nursing used NursingCAS during the last enrollment cycle to process more than 115,000 nursing school applications. Pre-registration required here. Limited seating available. Pre-registration required: More information coming soon.
2:00–3:00 p.m.	Emerging Solutions These immersive learning sessions dive deep into practical strategies for addressing academic nursing needs, blending expert insights, real-world case studies, peer-to-peer learning, and dynamic interaction. Ethics, Morality, and AI: Retaining Human Dignity in a Digital World What, really, is this thing we call AI? How does it work, and how should we think about it ethically? How does AI operate like a traditional technology, and how is it something new? This talk will explore the broader questions of technology that will help us understand the groundswell of AI in the last few years, in order to effectively encounter AI from a position of ethics, morality, and human dignity. It will discuss positions of faith leaders, as well as the wider landscape of ethical approaches to AI, and will offer challenges to think critically about AI usage in the context of nursing and healthcare. From Doing to Being: Cultivating Reflective Practitioners in a Competency-Based World As nursing education shifts toward competency-based frameworks, how do we assure the focus remains on forming reflective, caring practitioners? This session presents a reflective practice model for transforming competency-based education that guides learners beyond doing, into ways of being based on inquiry--asking questions about their practice, rethinking assumptions, and reframing responses for future applications. Presenters will share reflective micropractices crucial for shaping professional identity and redesigning assessment of what learners can do but more significantly, how they think, feel, and grow through their clinical experiences. Participants will leave with practical strategies for embedding structured reflection into competency-based teaching and assessment without adding burden to already-stretched curricula. Integrating the Mountain Model for EBPQI in BSN and MSN curriculum The Mountain Model for EBPQI integrates EBP and QI to provide a solid foundation for BSN and MSN prepared nurses to engage in sustainable practice change. This model can be scaffolded across pre-licensure and graduate curriculums and level 1 and 2 competencies to support the seamless transition to practice in respective roles as an EBPQI team member (BSN) and consultant (MSN). This presentation challenges deans, directors, and faculty to consider investing in faculty development to cultivate their own knowledge and expertise in EBPQI to ensure consistent teaching at both competency levels. This invitation can be reflected through course updates framed by the new Mountain Model for EBPQI. An exemplar from West Virginia University will be presented with pathways to achieve this aim. Additionally, tips to update curriculum within current research focused course objectives will be shared which can be adapted by institution type. A curated list of resources for ongoing faculty development and institutional next steps will also be provided. Making Nursing Visible: Using Practice Domains to Operationalize the AACN Essentials A new practice framework offers a shared language for making nursing’s contributions to patient and family outcomes more visible. In this panel, presenters will describe how the framework and two structured reflection tools were incorporated into post-clinical conferences to operationalize the AACN Essentials and intentionally support students’ role competency and professional identity formation. Study findings demonstrate how this approach helped students move beyond task-focused descriptions of care, recognize the integrated nature of professional nursing practice, and connect nursing interventions with patient and family outcomes. Panelists will discuss how these tools can strengthen students’ understanding of who they are becoming as nurses while supporting competency assessment, practice readiness, curricular alignment, and stronger academic-practice partnerships. Navigating AI-Mediated Scholarly Communication Generative AI is rapidly transforming scholarly communication by reshaping how knowledge is discovered, synthesized, written, reviewed, published, and disseminated across academic and research settings. This session introduces AI-mediated scholarly communication as a framework for understanding this reciprocal relationship between AI and scholarship: while generative AI is increasingly used to support writing, publishing, and research practices, scholarly works themselves are also becoming important resources for developing, enhancing, and evaluating AI systems. Through this framework, the session examines how these parallel transformations are reshaping scholarly communication, from research and writing to publishing and the growing role of scholarly works in AI development. The presentation will invite faculty and academic leaders to consider generative AI not only as a tool for supporting scholarship, but also as a force reshaping the systems, norms, and relationships that define scholarly communication. Attendees will gain a broader understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations associated with AI-mediated scholarship and its implications for research, publishing, and the future of academic knowledge production. *Robot Assisted Nursing Care: Navigating the 2026 AACN Essentials* in the Age of Robotics The purpose of this session is to explore how robots and co-bots can support nursing practice. It will define what a robot is, how they work, and the benefits and challenges nurses must consider. It will then describe some of the teaching strategies that align with AACN domains, competencies and sub-competencies at the generalist and advanced level. We will invite participants to consider how robot-assisted care can strengthen clinical judgment, person-centered care, quality and safety, and interprofessional collaboration while preserving the essential human dimensions of nursing. The session will also examine implications for curriculum design, ethical decision-making, and learner assessment. The goal is to help nurse educators as they prepare graduates to practice confidently in technology-enabled care environments. Soft Skills: The Hardest Skills to Master This experiential and engaging session will have you digging deep into the why of soft skills, the how you can cultivate them over a lifetime of learning, and the what you may like to bring to your professional setting to allow them to flourish where you teach, learn, and innovate. This workshop will incorporate movement, games, and discussion. What If Belonging Was by Design? Transformative Strategies for Building Student Connection and Success in Academic Nursing** A sense of belonging is essential to student engagement, well-being, persistence, and academic success. Yet belonging does not happen by chance. It can be intentionally designed through transformative educational practices that foster meaningful relationships, psychological safety, and supportive learning environments. In this interactive session, Drs. Karen Worthy and Coretta Jenerette will share innovative, evidence-informed strategies for cultivating belonging across nursing education settings. Faculty and academic leaders will explore practical, scalable approaches that strengthen student connection, promote engagement, and support learner success while creating learning environments where all students can thrive. Through real-world examples and implementation insights, participants will leave with actionable tools to design, implement, and sustain a culture of belonging within their own programs.
2:00–4:30 p.m. New this year!	Studio Sessions: From Ideas to Action Studio Sessions are highly interactive workshops designed for participants to actively apply concepts, tackle real-world challenges, and develop practical solutions. Working alongside facilitators and peers, attendees will engage in hands-on exercises, collaborative problem-solving, and structured activities that lead to tangible tools, frameworks, or action plans they can immediately implement within their institutions. AI Discernment: Designing Learning for Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment AI can expand learning and faculty capacity, but it can also perform the thinking that an educational experience is intended to develop or reveal. This interactive workshop helps educators make sense of that tension and determine what role, if any, AI should play in teaching, learning, and assessment. Participants will examine how AI is changing learner performance, clinical judgment, faculty work, and credible evidence of learning, and will be introduced to the AI Discernment Framework for Teaching and Learning© as a structured approach to responsible, context-appropriate educational decision-making. Participants will leave with a grounded understanding of AI use cases, along with adaptable tools and resources to begin planning the creation or redesign of one student-centered learning experience or assessment for their own setting. Stepping Off the Treadmill: Reclaiming Possibility in Complex Times In a time of continuous change, academic nursing education and health care leaders have an opportunity to strengthen themselves, support their communities, and lead with renewed clarity and purpose. This interactive session explores how connection, innovation, and reflection can help leaders navigate complexity while opening space for new possibilities. Moving beyond traditional approaches to burnout and time management, the session invites participants to examine the institutional and internal patterns that shape how time, energy, and attention are used. Through practical diagnostics, reflective exercises, and shared strategies, participants will identify ways to align their leadership practices with what matters most. Attendees will leave with concrete tools, workbooks, and a clear plan for sustaining momentum, strengthening community, and reclaiming possibility in their work and leadership. Mad About Competency: Experiments in CBE Course Design Join two mad scientists in the Competency Innovation Lab as we test, tinker, and experiment with the ingredients of effective competency-based course design. Through a series of engaging, hands-on design challenges, participants will investigate course descriptions, learner outcomes, assessments, rubrics, formative learning activities, and progression indicators to uncover the formula for meaningful, aligned competency-based education. Leave with practical strategies, design tools, and renewed confidence to transform your own courses from good ideas into evidence-informed learning experiences.
3:30–4:30 p.m.	Emerging Solutions These immersive learning sessions dive deep into practical strategies for addressing academic nursing needs, blending expert insights, real-world case studies, peer-to-peer learning, and dynamic interaction. Ethics, Morality, and AI: Retaining Human Dignity in a Digital World What, really, is this thing we call AI? How does it work, and how should we think about it ethically? How does AI operate like a traditional technology, and how is it something new? This talk will explore the broader questions of technology that will help us understand the groundswell of AI in the last few years, in order to effectively encounter AI from a position of ethics, morality, and human dignity. It will discuss positions of faith leaders, as well as the wider landscape of ethical approaches to AI, and will offer challenges to think critically about AI usage in the context of nursing and healthcare. From Doing to Being: Cultivating Reflective Practitioners in a Competency-Based World As nursing education shifts toward competency-based frameworks, how do we assure the focus remains on forming reflective, caring practitioners? This session presents a reflective practice model for transforming competency-based education that guides learners beyond doing, into ways of being based on inquiry--asking questions about their practice, rethinking assumptions, and reframing responses for future applications. Presenters will share reflective micropractices crucial for shaping professional identity and redesigning assessment of what learners can do but more significantly, how they think, feel, and grow through their clinical experiences. Participants will leave with practical strategies for embedding structured reflection into competency-based teaching and assessment without adding burden to already-stretched curricula. Integrating the Mountain Model for EBPQI in BSN and MSN curriculum The Mountain Model for EBPQI integrates EBP and QI to provide a solid foundation for BSN and MSN prepared nurses to engage in sustainable practice change. This model can be scaffolded across pre-licensure and graduate curriculums and level 1 and 2 competencies to support the seamless transition to practice in respective roles as an EBPQI team member (BSN) and consultant (MSN). This presentation challenges deans, directors, and faculty to consider investing in faculty development to cultivate their own knowledge and expertise in EBPQI to ensure consistent teaching at both competency levels. This invitation can be reflected through course updates framed by the new Mountain Model for EBPQI. An exemplar from West Virginia University will be presented with pathways to achieve this aim. Additionally, tips to update curriculum within current research focused course objectives will be shared which can be adapted by institution type. A curated list of resources for ongoing faculty development and institutional next steps will also be provided. Navigating AI-Mediated Scholarly Communication Generative AI is rapidly transforming scholarly communication by reshaping how knowledge is discovered, synthesized, written, reviewed, published, and disseminated across academic and research settings. This session introduces AI-mediated scholarly communication as a framework for understanding this reciprocal relationship between AI and scholarship: while generative AI is increasingly used to support writing, publishing, and research practices, scholarly works themselves are also becoming important resources for developing, enhancing, and evaluating AI systems. Through this framework, the session examines how these parallel transformations are reshaping scholarly communication, from research and writing to publishing and the growing role of scholarly works in AI development. The presentation will invite faculty and academic leaders to consider generative AI not only as a tool for supporting scholarship, but also as a force reshaping the systems, norms, and relationships that define scholarly communication. Attendees will gain a broader understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and ethical considerations associated with AI-mediated scholarship and its implications for research, publishing, and the future of academic knowledge production. Preceptors as Partners: Practical Tools for Engaging Clinical Nurses in Competency-Based Nursing Education As nursing education transitions to competency-based education aligned with the AACN Essentials, clinical nurse preceptors play an increasingly important role in preparing practice-ready graduates. This presentation will explore how faculty can engage preceptors as essential partners in helping students demonstrate competencies in real-world clinical environments. Participants will examine common challenges to preceptor engagement and be provided with practical tools faculty can use to strengthen collaboration, support meaningful observation and feedback, and promote students’ progression toward competency. By better equipping and supporting preceptors, nursing programs can enhance clinical learning and contribute to safe, high-quality patient care. Preparing Practice-Ready New Graduate Nurses: Practical Strategies for Academic-Practice Partnerships Preparing practice-ready new graduate nurses requires intentional collaboration between schools of nursing and healthcare organizations. This session shares lessons learned from the practice perspective, including real-world examples of building successful academic-practice partnerships that strengthen graduates' readiness for professional practice while supporting recruitment and retention. Drawing on best practices, including recommendations from the AACN-AONL Task Force on Academic-Practice Partnerships, presenters will discuss practical approaches that attendees can adapt to strengthen collaboration with their own practice partners. The session will also highlight the role of Nurse Residency Programs in supporting the transition of new graduate nurses into professional practice. *Robot Assisted Nursing Care: Navigating the 2026 AACN Essentials* in the Age of Robotics The purpose of this session is to explore how robots and co-bots can support nursing practice. It will define what a robot is, how they work, and the benefits and challenges nurses must consider. It will then describe some of the teaching strategies that align with AACN domains, competencies and sub-competencies at the generalist and advanced level. We will invite participants to consider how robot-assisted care can strengthen clinical judgment, person-centered care, quality and safety, and interprofessional collaboration while preserving the essential human dimensions of nursing. The session will also examine implications for curriculum design, ethical decision-making, and learner assessment. The goal is to help nurse educators as they prepare graduates to practice confidently in technology-enabled care environments. What If Belonging Was by Design? Transformative Strategies for Building Student Connection and Success in Academic Nursing** A sense of belonging is essential to student engagement, well-being, persistence, and academic success. Yet belonging does not happen by chance. It can be intentionally designed through transformative educational practices that foster meaningful relationships, psychological safety, and supportive learning environments. In this interactive session, Drs. Karen Worthy and Coretta Jenerette will share innovative, evidence-informed strategies for cultivating belonging across nursing education settings. Faculty and academic leaders will explore practical, scalable approaches that strengthen student connection, promote engagement, and support learner success while creating learning environments where all students can thrive. Through real-world examples and implementation insights, participants will leave with actionable tools to design, implement, and sustain a culture of belonging within their own programs.
4:45–5:45 p.m.	Introducing the Mountain Model for Evidence-Based Practice Quality Improvement for BSN and MSN Students This presentation will provide faculty and administrators who teach and oversee BSN and MSN programs with a comprehensive introduction to a new framework (The Mountain Model) that integrates research, evidence-based practice (EBP) and quality improvement (QI) for sustainable practice change initiatives. Not only do BSN prepared RNs and MSN prepared advanced nurse experts (e.g. APRNs, Nurse Educators and nurse managers) need to understand direct patient care practices, they also need to be part of the solution to improving practice. The Mountain Model for Evidence Based Practice Quality Improvement clearly demonstrates the roles of the BSN and MSN prepared nurse in advancing sustainable healthcare and health system improvement in practice. This presentation will describe the journey up the EBPQI mountain beginning with problem identification in practice and how to use an innovative alternative to the PICOT question (PPCO – Problem, Population, Change, Outcome) to search the external (research and other) evidence for practice change. Continuing up the mountain, the EBP level (critical appraisal and synthesis of the evidence + clinical expertise + population culture), Purpose and Aims, Internal Evidence, QI, and Dissemination will be described using an example of completed initiative that has made a sustainable impact in practice.
4:45–6:00 p.m.	Getting Published: Tips for Success Publishing is an excellent method for the dissemination of the body of evidence that advances nursing science as well as a forum for sharing solutions to common problems. It is essential that faculty not only publish their scholarship, but also mentor students in the publishing process. This session will focus on strategies to select a publishable topic, determine the appropriate audience for the topic, choose a suitable journal, and decide authorship.
6:30 p.m.	Networking Dinners (optional)

December 5

Time	Session
6:00 a.m.	Running and Walking Groups (optional)
7:30–11:30 a.m.	Registration Open
8:15–9:00 a.m.	Podium Abstract Presentations AACN’s version of TED Talks! Each presenter has 15 minutes to present key insights, followed by 5 minutes for audience Q&A, making these sessions fast-paced and idea-rich. Please refer to the abstract schedule in your conference bag or on the conference app for more details.
7:00–9:00 a.m.	Continental Breakfast
8:00–9:00 a.m.	Coffee & Conversations
9:30–10:30 a.m.	Plenary Building a Competency-Based Curriculum: Lessons from the Field Transitioning to competency-based education requires a shift from course-level changes to intentional, program-level curriculum design. In this session, faculty from schools that are making meaningful progress in their CBE journey will share practical strategies, lessons learned, and approaches to engaging the entire faculty in curriculum redesign using backward design. Participants will gain insights they can apply to strengthen their own transition to a competency-based curriculum.
10:30–11:30 a.m.	Closing Plenary The Power of Us: Building Shared Identity, Trust, and Communication Across Academic Nursing Academic nursing is navigating a complex environment marked by rapid change, increasing polarization, workforce strain, and the need to lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose. In this engaging session, Dr. Jay Van Bavel and Dr. Tessa West bring together complementary areas of expertise to help participants better understand how identity, perception, communication, and workplace dynamics shape their effectiveness as leaders. Drawing on Dr. Van Bavel’s research on identity, bias, motivation, and collective behavior, alongside Dr. West’s research on interpersonal communication, feedback, workplace conflict, and professional fulfillment, the session will offer a practical framework for strengthening self-awareness, navigating difficult conversations, and exercising influence with greater intention. Participants will leave with evidence-informed strategies to communicate more effectively, manage complex interactions, build confidence in moments of tension, and lead from a stronger sense of personal agency in service to nursing education and health care transformation.

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Continuing Education

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. Attendees may earn up to 25 NCPD credits.

For questions, contact the AACN Conference Team today!

Phone: 202-463-6930 | Email: conferences@aacnnursing.org | Website: www.aacnnursing.org/conferences