Dean
Simmons College
Boston, MA
Dr. Beal currently serves as Professor and Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences. Prior to accepting the interim deanship in July 2010, she served for ten years as the professor and chair of Nursing and the Associate Dean of the School of Health Sciences. In that role she was instrumental in building the department by expanding curricular options, hiring and developing new faculty, establishing five local and three international off-site programs, and raising more than $6M in donations, including $2M to develop a now highly successful bridge and mentoring programs for students from disadvantaged educational and ethnically diverse backgrounds who are at academic risk. Dr. Beal has successfully led the school through five national accreditations. Dr. Beal was a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow from 2008-2011. She is widely published with more than 75 peer reviewed articles. Her well funded program of research focuses on role development of neonatal nurse practitioners and for the past 10 years on the development of a model of clinical nurse scholars. She is sought after as a regional and national speaker. Dr. Beal is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing and the Journal of Nursing Education as well as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, the Journal of Professional Nursing, and Research in Nursing and Health. Dr. Beal is the Vice President of the MA Association of Colleges of Nursing, where she is active in the Department of Higher Education’s Nursing and Allied Health Initiative. She is a two term director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Board, and a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Committee of Fellows. She is a Fellow of the National Academies of Practice and was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing in October 2012. Dr. Beal received her BSN from Skidmore College, her MSN from Yale, and DNSc from Boston University.