A Message From Dr. Michele Roberts

 Dear friends, 

I hope this message finds you well! 

It has been a long time since I have communicated with the entirety of our CBNE community, and for that, I apologize. Your enthusiasm for advancing competency-based nursing education was (and is!) much appreciated. At the same time, organizing and harnessing the amazing energy you all brought to the initiative was slightly challenging, as many of you have diverse interests and passions. It is all good, as this is exactly why this group came together, and for this I am grateful. 

While I have maintained contact with several members and regional leaders since we last formally met in January, other factors have prevented me from fully engaging with all of you. I would like to explain some of what has precluded my full participation and express my appreciation for your patience during this time. 

Soon after our last national call, I was asked to join a strategic action group charged with developing guidelines for competency-based education for all levels of nursing programs. Working with this international team was an amazing experience, and our efforts culminated in the recently released National League for Nursing Competency-Based Education Toolkit. I was also privileged to lead one of the NLN’s pre-conference workshops at their Summit in San Antonio to introduce the toolkit, and work directly with nurse educators seeking to transition their programs using competency-based frameworks. 

These last nine months have also been a time of personal and professional transition in my life. A few years ago my husband and I decided to relocate to the Tampa Bay area, and we broke ground on our dream home in late January. As construction moved along, and the timeline for leaving New Jersey grew shorter, I decided to seek an opportunity to continue my academic career in Florida. I am happy to share that I accepted a position at the University of South Florida College of Nursing, which I will begin in December. I feel confident that I can continue my efforts to promote a practice-ready workforce and advance the science of nursing education during my time there. 

In recognizing that my technology skills are limited, I decided to invest in the future of our CBNE Network by hiring a professional web designer to reformat our website. My goals for doing this were to give greater voice to our membership, improve ease of navigation, and create a repository for the work that our group has generated. The official launch of the new site is imminent, and one of the features I am most excited about is the capacity to offer threaded discussion forums. I also plan to incorporate a blog soon, which I will keep you updated on. 

Last, some exciting research initiatives have continued during my absence, and I want to acknowledge the hard work of the following members: 

• Dr. Tracey Chan was part of a team that has been working to identify entrustable professional activities (EPA) for advanced practice nurses. She has presented on this topic at several conferences, and the group’s efforts have been published in the September/October issue of Nurse Educator. 

• Dr. Angela Schooley continues to lead a multi-site research project to evaluate a learning activity aimed at promoting Essentials competencies and clinical judgment. The group has begun to disseminate their work and will present a poster detailing strategies for organizing multi-site research projects at the upcoming AACN Transform conference in New Orleans this December. 

I encourage you to email me with any research or scholarship you are participating in with other members of the CBNE Network so that we may feature you on our website and in our social media posts. 

To all who were impacted by Helene or are in the path of Milton - please stay safe and know that our prayers are with you. 

I appreciate each of you and look forward to our continued collaboration! 

All the best, 

Michele