There are some new faces around the Williams-Brice Nursing Building this semester. Three new faculty members have joined our celebrated staff. With extensive clinical and educational backgrounds, they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to nursing classrooms.
Gaye Douglas, DNP, MEd, APRN-BC
Gaye Douglas comes to Carolina with over 30 years’ experience as a nurse. Prior to joining our faculty, she worked at Francis Marion University as an assistant professor of nursing for over three years. This semester, Douglas is teaching an undergraduate psych mental health class while also taking classes to earn her psych mental health nurse practitioner post-masters certificate.
Douglas chose to come to USC to work closely with other faculty across the university on expanding telehealth services to rural areas of South Carolina. A native of Williamsburg County, which is ranked 45th out of 46 for health disparities in SC, Douglas has a passion to expand health services to those in rural counties.
“For years I've been trying to provide access to care to folks in the rural areas through telehealth. It's really hard when you're out there to gain momentum to get people interested and willing to do it. So now, here at USC, I have access to a pool of people pulling together to provide those resources to those in rural areas. I see that already just in the two weeks that I've been here,” Douglas said.
Crystal Graham also comes to Carolina from Francis Marion University. She worked there for over five years as the simulation director while also teaching undergraduate and interprofessional courses. She is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and 2009 BSN alumna from the USC College of Nursing. This semester, Graham is teaching a graduate research theory course and will be teaching undergraduate pharmacology this summer and fall.
Graham is a disparities researcher with a focus on educational disparities and how it relates to the nursing workforce. Her interest is in interventions to increase recruitment retention of disadvantaged students and testing to see if simulation is a method that can be used to increase the diversity of the nursing workforce by increasing the diversity of the nursing student population.
“(At USC) I plan to continue teaching, continue in simulation, and become engrossed in the research of the university. Finding a balance between those is going to be a challenge, but one that I'm up for because it's what I love. I'm really excited about being able to combine all of my passions,” Graham said.
Rachel Onello, PhD, RN, CHSE, CNE, CNL
Rachel Onello joins the USC College of Nursing as the director of the Clinical Simulation Lab. She has over nine years’ experience in clinical simulation education with formal education from the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research at the University of Pittsburgh and the Center for Medical Simulation at Harvard University. She comes to Carolina from the University of Maryland, where she was the assistant director of the simulation lab and taught clinical and simulation courses to both undergraduate and graduate students.
Onello’s main area of interest is in faculty development, particularly around simulation design integration and debriefing, not just in simulation-based encounters but also facilitating debriefing style feedback conversations in clinical learning environments.
“I look forward to identifying how to best support the faculty and meet the needs of the students so that we are graduating really stellar practitioners that are both reflective in nature and also really help transform the landscape of health care,” Onello said.