Jean W. Davis ’19Ph.D., assistant professor at UCF’s College of Nursing, has been honored with the 2025 Outstanding Nurse Practitioner Educator Award from the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties.
The award recognizes a nurse practitioner faculty member who enhances nurse practitioner education through innovative curriculum development, exceptional teaching practices, policy leadership, creative strategies, and advocacy for doctoral programs. Davis was honored during the organization’s annual awards gala held on April 12 in Denver, Colorado.
Davis has served in various faculty roles educating undergraduate and graduate students at colleges and universities throughout Florida since 1994.
Since joining UCF’s faculty in 2019, Davis has focused her instruction on graduate students where she applies creative teaching strategies such as case-specific diagnostic reasoning and co-decision-making activities and implemented student assignments using artificial intelligence (AI).
An advocate for competency-based nurse practitioner education, Davis leverages her leadership in roles such as chair of UCF’s graduate nursing curriculum committee and as an accreditation site evaluator for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
She has also served in several appointed volunteer roles on National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties committees and task forces that addressed bachelor’s to doctoral curriculum, doctor of nursing practice projects, and faculty workload.
In addition to her passion for education, Davis is passionate about her research which focuses on physical activity to improve patient outcomes. To date at UCF, Davis has advised more than 30 graduate students in their doctoral thesis, dissertation or scholarly projects as chair or a committee member.
Davis is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and holds three doctoral degrees, including a Nursing Ph.D. from UCF. In addition to her faculty role at UCF, Davis is a nurse practitioner research scientist within the Veterans Health Administration.
Last year, Davis was honored as a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academies of Practice in Nursing.
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