DNP Faculty

Dr. Ashcraft is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Nurses Association, Sigma Theta Tau International (currently Iota Mu Chapter President), Gerontological Society of America, National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (member of NACNS Gerontological Nursing Task Force), and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She has served as a reviewer for Long Term Care Interface, Journal of Emergency Nursing, and Journal of Family and Community Health, as well as for conference abstracts, presentations, and research grants.

Past clinical experience includes staff nursing (Emergency Services Parkland Memorial Hospital, ICU/CCU Southeastern Methodist Hospital), clinical nurse specialist (Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas), and Director of Education (Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas). Past academic experience includes Instructor/Course Coordinator (Blinn College, Bryan, Texas).

Dr. Fenton served as Dean and Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) School of Nursing from 1986 to 2001. She has served as Project Director for multiple advanced practice nursing education and training grants and as Program Director for Nurse Practitioner programs. She was the driving force behind the development of a doctoral program in nursing with a focus on healing at UTMB. Her clinical practice has included experience as a Respiratory Clinical Nurse Specialist and as an Adult Nurse Practitioner. Her current clinical focus is in the area of holistic nursing and complementary and alternative modalities. She serves as Associate Editor of EXPLORE: the Journal of Science and Healing and was formally Associate Editor Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. She serves on the editorial boards for Family & Community Health and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing and as a reviewer for multiple nursing journals.

Her past research has focused on the development of the concept of humanistic care in nursing and establishing national standards for advanced practice education. Her qualitative study of the practice of Clinical Nurse Specialists was utilized in the development of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) document, Essentials of Masters Education and she served on the AACN Essentials committee. Her current research is a national qualitative study of the integration of holistic nursing practices and complementary modalities in the curricula of Schools of Nursing.

She served as a member and president of the Texas State Board of Nurse Examiners and was the founding chair of the Texas Organization for Baccalaureate and Graduate Nursing Education. Dr. Fenton was instrumental in the development of the UTMB Center for International Health and recognition of the UTMB School of Nursing as a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Development in Primary Health Care. She has served as an international nursing consultant for WHO, the Kellogg Foundation and USAID.

Dr Fenton joined the faculty of the Texas Tech University Health Science Center School of Nursing as Professor and Director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program in September 2006.

Dr. Green’s career has focused on teaching and practice in the areas of adult health, critical care and public health policy. She is a RWJ Executive Nurse Fellow Alumni (Class of 2001) and a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. Her professional activities focus on providing significant leadership in addressing public policy issues related to solving the nursing shortage and other workplace issues. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice and the Journal of Nursing Education. Dr. Green is an immediate past member of the American Nurses Association Political Action Committee Board of Directors and has served on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Governmental Affairs Committee. She is a past President of the Texas Nurses Association and has received recognition as a Distinguished Lecturer by Sigma Theta Tau International, Great 100 Nursing Alumni of Texas Woman’s University and Teacher of the Year from the Texas Nursing Students Association.

Coalition building is one of her strengths, having served as founding member of the Texas Nursing Education Policy Coalition, the Texas Nursing Legislative Agenda Policy Coalition, and the Texas Patient Safety Alliance. She also provided leadership for the establishment of the Texas Nursing Competency Consortium – a regional consortium working to develop and test a model competency system, integrate and promulgate a framework for nursing competencies that will be used in education and practice and recommend policy changes related to nursing competency assessment.

Alexia has a long history of political activism and advocacy in the health care arena, and has testified fifteen times before state and regulatory entities regarding nursing and health care policy issues.

She currently serves on the Texas Health Care Policy Council, the Texas Health Workforce Planning Partnership, the Texas Nursing Workforce Center Advisory Committee, and the Texas Health Policy Institute Vision Project, all advising the Governor and legislators on policy strategies for the state. In April 2008 Dr. Green was selected by the Governor to lead the Texas team which will participate in the National Nursing Education Capacity Summit scheduled for summer 2008. This team will be working at the state and national level over the next year to develop a cohesive and comprehensive health policy strategy to address nursing shortages in the State of Texas.

In addition, she has also held an elected political position in Texas, as the first woman ever to be elected to her local school board in the 56-year history of the school district. Alexia is a native Texan, currently residing in Lubbock.

Dr. Hanley has integrated complementary and alternative modalities in her holistic nursing practice for more than 20 years. She has participated in the development and implementation of holistic health programs, served as faculty advisor in the development of the Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and has integrated complementary approaches in her work in promoting resilience in students and faculty. She has extensive experience in curriculum development and online teaching, health care policy and ethics, holistic nursing, and Palliative Care. In her holistic nursing practice she integrated the use complementary therapies in the care of persons with alterations in health.

Dr. Hanley has taught in graduate and non-traditional undergraduate nursing programs at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where she served as the Director of the Accelerated Baccalaureate Nursing Program and Director of the Center for Healing Practices in Nursing. Dr. Hanley served as Director of Education for the Board of Nurse Examiners in Texas and Coordinator for Resource Utilization in the Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center. Currently, she serves on the American Holistic Nurses Association Leadership Council as the Education Coordinator, is an appraiser for the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and a peer reviewer for the Journal of Holistic Nursing, and Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.

Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council: Director of Nursing Research and Informatics – Manage the technology implementation of patient safety and quality data collection and subsequent analysis for 66 hospitals in rural Texas. This implementation was funded by a three-year Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research grant.

VHA Inc., Irving, Texas as follows: Senior Manager, Center for Research and Innovation – Selected clinical systems and negotiated agreements with third party vendors. Management of research and surveys conducted in support of the marketing and sales business lines of VHA Inc. Provided direction of data integrity for the Data Comparison Reporting System (DCRS) and Clinical-Financial Information System (CFIS) decision support systems.

St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Topeka, Kansas: Division Director of Nursing Information Services – Provided assistance to the Vice President of Patient Care Service in determining the strategic direction for computerization of the Nursing Department. Assisted in development of annual fiscal budgets for each nursing unit (total of 20) in the Nursing Department. Maintained the GRASP patient classification system that was used to determine staff allocation on a day-to-day basis and to project for future staffing needs. Directed computer implementation and maintenance of the house-wide CliniCom bedside computer system. Directed computer implementation and maintenance of the hospital's order communications computer system. Supervised the Staffing Coordinator who was responsible for day shift staffing determination, staff schedules and credentialing/certification expirations for all Nursing Department employees.

Staff Nurse, Dialysis Center - Initiated and monitored maintenance hemodialysis and chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) treatments for and in-patient and out-patient population.

Bethany Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas as follows: Staff nurse; Surgical Unit - Managed overall primary nursing care of post-surgical patients (primarily major abdominal and thoracic). Staff nurse; Medical Unit - Managed overall primary nursing care of medical patients (primarily diabetes, post-myocardial infarct, stroke, and pneumonia)

Dr. Warner has professional expertise in veterinary medicine, zoonotic diseases, public health, clinical preventive medicine, travel medicine, environmental health, infectious diseases: epidemiology (study design, data analysis, and interpretation). While in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Warner conducted many studies of environmental & occupational illnesses/injuries, food-borne disease outbreaks, vector-borne diseases, and person-to-person diseases such as TB, HIV-AIDS, STIs, influenza, and viral hepatitis. While at TTUHSC, Dr. Warner has carried a significant teaching portfolio for first- & second-year medical students, and to a lesser degree third-year medical students and Family Medicine residents. He has studied women’s & children’s health issues, community outbreaks, nosocomial infections, diseases associated with international travel, food safety issues, and, most recently, several aspects of West Nile viral diseases (equine and human) across the state of Texas. In the clinical arena, he is the Director of Family Medicine’s TravelMed Clinic, seeing over 160 clients/year who travel to 45 - 55 different countries around the world.

Dr. Warner is board certified in epidemiology by both the American College of Epidemiology and the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Over the years, his scholarly work has been supported by the NIH, US Air Force, US DOD, AAMC/CDC, USDHHS/HRSA, Texas Cattle Feeders, and the Texas Dept. of State Health Services. He has mentored and been a Committee member for 10 TTU/TTUHSC graduate students [eight for the PhD] and is a member of both the TTU and TTUHSC graduate faculties. Dr. Warner has authored over 20 peer-reviewed articles in major medical/epidemiology journals and more than 15 posters at regional, state, national and international meetings. Dr. Warner provides consultation to the City of Lubbock Health Department and often provides expert testimony in legal cases.

He has been an invited speaker at many local, regional, state, national, & international professional programs over the years. Dr. Warner has worked with and provided peer-review & consultation to several professional organizations including the Association of Military Surgeons of the US, American Veterinary Medical Assoc., Texas Veterinary Medical Assoc., and the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine (ACVPM). He currently serves as a peer-reviewer for Annuals of Epidemiology, J Amer Vet Med Assoc, & Amer J Vet Research.

A native of Iran, Dr. Nazzi Wigmans immigrated to the United States in 1987, and started working on the development and sales of specialty plastics for Mitsui Plastics, Inc. in New York City. Prior to leaving Iran, she had worked 7 years for Asahi Shimbun, the leading Japanese newspaper, reporting, among other things, on the Iran-Iraq war. After moving to Texas in 1992, she decided to supplement her undergraduate education in economics with graduate studies. At Texas Tech University, she obtained MBA (1995), MSBA-Finance (1997) and PhD in Economics (2006) degrees. During that period, she also taught MBA courses at the University of the Hague (the Netherlands 1999-2000) and Economics at TTU (2001-2004). After completing her PhD, Dr. Wigmans accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance at TTU and taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the department of Finance from September 2006 to December 2007. Dr. Wigmans’ research focuses on population transitions and demographics, in particular the effects of demographic transitions on the future of social security systems in developed countries. During an 8-month stay in Italy (2004), she compiled the data pertaining to the particular situation in that country, and made the analysis of the future sustainability of the Italian public pension system the topic of her dissertation. Dr. Wigmans has also acted as a consultant for McGraw Hill Publishing, Text Book Division, in Forums and as a referee, evaluating new textbooks and providing feedback to the authors.

She has also been a referee for papers submitted to FMA conferences. Dr. Wigmans is currently residing in Geneva, Switzerland, where she accompanies her husband on his sabbatical leave.