Lucy Megginson, assistant professor of nursing at the University of West Georgia, has been named dean of Health Sciences at Georgia Highlands College. Megginson previously served as assistant professor of nursing at GHC from 2005 to 2010. Last year she was also an adjunct professor at Shorter University in its Study-Abroad program.

Megginson holds both a Doctor of Philosophy and Bachelor of Science in nursing from Medical University of South Carolina. She earned a Master of Science in nursing education from the University of West Georgia. She returns to Highlands with classroom and clinical experience at both the graduate and undergraduate level. While at West Georgia she helped develop a new nursing curriculum and a program for the institution’s new Doctor of Education degree in nursing.

She is a member of the Southern Nursing Research Society, American Nurses Association, National League for Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, the Christian Nurses Association, and the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses.

Megginson is published in the Journal of Nursing Education, Nurse Educator, Journal of Christian Nursing and Journal of Nursing Management. She has played an integral role in the design and planning of the Free Clinic of Rome establishing policies and procedure, recruiting volunteers, and volunteering there as a practicing nurse. She serves on the ethics committee at Floyd Medical Center.

She will be instrumental in guiding and expanding the new nursing baccalaureate degree at GHC. The RN to BSN program will serve as a springboard to meet the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 recommendation to increase the national proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020.

Megginson, who lives in Rome with her two sons Sam and Matt, will begin her duties at Georgia Highlands this summer.