People Group Archives: Expertise

Instructor Jenny Garden has served as an operating room nurse since earning her ASN in 2001 and as a preceptor for nursing students and nurse interns since 2002. She has also served as an infection control practitioner. Garden first joined the University of Central Florida College of Nursing in 2021 as a clinical instructor and […]

Instructor Sara Snyder is a healthcare professional with a background in emergency nursing and a passion for advancing healthcare practices. A certified emergency nurse, Snyder has served in emergency departments and ICUs across the country for nearly two decades. In addition to her teaching roles, Snyder is currently working toward her doctorate in nursing at […]

A dual alumna of the UCF College of Nursing, Instructor Kelsey Gaffka helps educate future generations of Knight nurses and serves as site coordinator for UCF’s Daytona Beach campus. A board-certified registered nurse with an extensive background in obstetrical nursing, Gaffka is passionate about improving care for the perinatal population as well as facilitating the […]

Lecturer Latonia Green has held a variety of clinical appointments as a registered nurse, head nurse and nurse manager at hospitals in Tennessee and Florida. Most recently, she served as a nurse manager at AdventHealth East Orlando, directing and managing 24-hour clinical operations of two observation and medical telemetry units. After earning her DNP degree, […]

Kimberly Scalise is a lecturer and serves as director of the post-licensure undergraduate programs at UCF’s College of Nursing. Experienced in a range of teaching modalities including online, didactic and simulation, Scalise is especially passionate about online education and preparing post-licensure nurses as they seek higher education. A certified healthcare simulation educator and certified nurse […]

Frances Armstrong, clinical assistant professor and graduate simulation coordinator at UCF’s College of Nursing, is a dual-certified adult-gerontology acute care and primary care nurse practitioner with a diverse clinical background including sleep medicine, pulmonary medicine and critical care. She continues to maintains a clinical practice in critical care medicine in addition to her academic appointments […]

Assistant Professor Jennifer Crook is a nationally recognized nutritional epidemiologist and nurse scientist whose work investigates how nutritional insecurity becomes biologically embedded to drive inflammation, symptom burden and cancer disparities. Her research integrates omics‑based biomarkers, nutritional epidemiology and community‑engaged methods to develop clinically actionable tools that advance cancer outcomes. In a previous faculty role at […]

Hannah Spencer is an instructor at the Cocoa campus of the University of Central Florida College of Nursing. A board-certified pediatric nurse, Spencer has a wide array of experience in pediatric nursing including acute care, outpatient chronic care management, and pediatric pulmonology/sleep medicine with a specific focus on severe asthma and cystic fibrosis. She is […]

Associate Professor Rui Xie holds appointments in both UCF’s College of Nursing and College of Sciences, and is the principal investigator at the university’s Artificial Intelligence and Statistics for Health and Nursing Research Lab. His research encompasses the domains of statistics, biostatistics, machine learning and public health. His primary focus revolves around advancing statistical sketching and […]

Jennie M. Wagner is a lecturer at UCF’s College of Nursing who previously has led and taught RN to BSN and RN to MSN programs at institutions in North Carolina. She has actively served on several accreditation agencies and currently is an appointed member of the National League for Nursing accreditation review committee and evaluator […]