Dr Rose Clarke Nanyonga, the Vice-Chancellor of Clarke International University was recently appointed as Associate Professor of Nursing Leadership, Management and Policy at the university. This appointment makes the scholar, the first female nurse to earn this title in Uganda.
But who is Dr Nanyonga?
Dr Nanyonga certainly wears many hats. She is a well-established inspirational healthcare leader, educator, learner, researcher, nurse, mentor, policy influencer, and global health enthusiast, with more than 26 years of clinical nursing experience and health systems & administrative leadership.
Before pursuing a career in academia, she worked as the Director of Nursing and Midwifery Services at International Hospital Kampala and later served as the Director of Clinical Services for International Medical Group, Kampala, Uganda.
She was instrumental in helping Dr Ian Clarke to establish the International Hospital School of Nursing in 2005, which subsequently formed the first faculty of CIU in 2008.
A woman of firsts, Dr Nanyonga was the first in her birth family to earn a college degree, graduating with a Bachelor of Science-Nursing from Arkansas Tech University, USA in 2002 with the highest distinction (Summa Cum Laude) in her class. She went on to earn a Master of Science in Nursing degree from Baylor University, USA in 2005 (Family Nurse Practitioner); a PhD in Nursing from Yale University, USA in 2015; and a Graduate Certificate of Concentration in Global Health from the Whitney and Betty McMillan Center for International Studies at Yale University, USA in 2015.
She was the first Ugandan graduate to have a scholarship named in her honour at Yale University in 2015 and has gone on to win more honours including becoming a Jonas Scholar (Yale University); Distinguished Alumnae (Yale-2018); a Hall of Distinction Alumnae (Arkansas Tech University-2020); and was named among the 100 Most Outstanding Women Nurse and Midwife Leaders by Women in Global Health a story we covered previously.
In addition to her busy schedule as VC, Dr Nanyonga is interested in research that explores issues related to Health Systems Strengthening, Management of Chronic Illnesses, Health care and Higher Education Leadership & Policy, and Nursing Workforce studies. Her PhD work examined Leadership, Followership, and the Context, an Integrative Examination of Nursing Leadership in Uganda. She is a co-Principal Investigator in multiple research studies exploring hypertension care in Uganda, optimising nurse-led interventions for hypertension management, and is currently an institutional faculty mentor for the Health Professions Education and training for strengthening the health system and services in Uganda program (NIH Grant No. 1R25TW011213) in which CIU is a participating institution. Her impressive CV highlights a wide range of platforms where her research has been disseminated through publications in peer review journals, conferences, webinars, and relevant presentations.
Dr Nanyonga believes that the best work that academicians do is in the community where individuals can translate theories into tangible and practical solutions, thus community outreach remains a core pillar of her academic work. Dr Nanyonga is the founder of the Rose’s Journey Scholarship Fund which was established in 2009 to support and increase the number of nurses and midwives with baccalaureate degrees in Uganda. To date, this program has sponsored over 72 health professional students to complete their degrees. She also spearheads the Lead, Inspire, Enable leadership training programs for nurses and midwives in practice. She also serves on numerous committees and boards, holds multiple speaking engagements and mentoring webinars annually, and is passionate about enabling young people through thought and value-oriented leadership.
In 2009, Dr Nanyonga pioneered a grassroots campaign to end child sacrifice and crimes associated with ritualistic child sacrifice in Uganda. She has remained an avid advocate for change in this area
She is a member of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, American Nurses Association and Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society for Nurses.
For the last 7 years, Dr Nanyonga has successfully led the CIU leadership and staff to transition the university from a disadvantaged state to a position where CIU is well-established as one of the leading private universities in Uganda. In recent months, with the country besieged by the Covid-19 Pandemic, she and her team demonstrated leadership by collaboratively working with the National Council of Higher Education to foster continuity of learning through the Emergency Open Distance and E-Learning for health professional students at CIU.
She has done so while remaining passionate about issues that impact the nursing and midwifery profession and has remained a key leadership figure for the Nursing and Midwives Leaders Think Tank, an advocacy group established in 2020 to respond to issues impacting the fraternity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We join every nurse, midwife and all Ugandans in celebrating this well-accomplished scholar.
