Susan Bakewell-Sachs: The College of New Jersey

The daughter and granddaughter of nurses, Susan Bakewell-Sachs, R.N., Ph.D., P.N.P.-B.C., never aspired to be a faculty member. But in the early 1980s she happened to hear nursing icon Claire Fagin, R.N., Ph.D., F.A.A.N., then dean of the school of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, discuss the importance of nurse education on the national news. Fagin’s message resonated with Bakewell-Sachs, then a young neonatal intensive care nurse at a medical health center in Virginia who had recently been passed over for a promotion. Soon after, Bakewell-Sachs packed up her bags and enrolled in the graduate nursing program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she embarked on an academic journey that would take her to the heights of nursing education.

Now dean of the school of nursing at the College of New Jersey, Bakewell-Sachs takes every opportunity to spread the same message about the importance of nurse education that she heard from Fagin some four decades ago. Nurse faculty, she says, are critical to the nation’s health because they push the science of health care forward and educate the next generation of nurses. That is an especially critical mission now because of the graying nursing workforce and the aging population of babyboomers with multiple chronic conditions who will be placing greater demands than ever on the nation’s health care system.

At the same time, higher education is critical for nurses if they hope to advance in a science-based field, she says. Aside from the potential for leadership positions, there are countless other benefits to life in academia, including the opportunity to take advantage of all that the profession has to offer: clinical work, scholarship, and teaching. “It’s like having multiple careers within a single career,” Bakewell-Sachs says. Nurses, she notes, do not lose their influence if they leave direct care; to the contrary, they see their contributions reach far beyond individual patients through scholarship and instruction that affects the entire health care system.

Bakewell-Sachs learned this first-hand in graduate school, when she took a part-time position as a research assistant to help pay tuition bills. After she graduated with a master’s degree she got a full time job as a clinical nurse specialist on a three-year clinical trial involving neonatal care. “I was smitten,” she says. “Suddenly, I had a different career trajectory. I saw myself getting a Ph.D. to be able to conduct research and I wanted to teach.”

Bakewell-Sachs did her doctoral research in the area of outcomes of premature infants and their families. She followed up with a federally funded project later in her career in which she and a team of researchers examined optimal discharge times for premature babies. The results of that study are set to be published soon.

As dean, Bakewell-Sachs continues to enjoy all aspects of nursing: caring for patients during the time she spends in clinical practice; the intellectual stimulation of scholarly research; passing on knowledge to the next generation of nurses; and helping young nurses land their first jobs. In addition, Bakewell-Sachs is a national nurse leader through the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Executive Nurse Fellow in the 2007 cohort, and a member of the March of Dimes Nurse Advisory Council. And she is program director for the New Jersey Nursing Initiative, an RWJF program at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. The biggest reward comes when she reconnects with former students, she says: “The highest point for me is always when I hear back from an alum,” she says. “There is nothing more satisfying than their successes.”