Lynne Palma has been in various educational roles in the College of Nursing at FAU for more than 35 years. She has a special interest and expertise in teaching pharmacology and has developed online courses certified by Quality Matters for undergraduate and graduate nursing students. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the comparison of online vs face-to-face instruction.

Helping students learn and master knowledge to assure a high level of competency requires coursework and clinical experiences that employ critical thinking. She employs active learning in the form of nursing situations in her coursework that is based on her robust experience as a clinician. Practice experience includes providing primary care as a family nurse practitioner for diverse and underrepresented patient populations in both Florida and California. As an active participant in a study abroad program for nurse practitioner (NP) students at FAU, she witnessed the impact that this novel clinical experience had on the lives of the learners as well as the Guatemalan patients.

The recent return to her full-time educational role after leading a new NP residency program in Northern California was not a difficult choice given her passion for nursing education. The lessons learned from her role as director for the NP Residency Program in Petaluma Health Center (PHC) further strengthened her skills as a clinician in a Federally Qualified Health Center. It also helped her recognize practice and knowledge gaps seen in graduates of NP programs across the United States. Ideas for strengthening the NP curriculum such as measuring competencies is her current focus.

In her previous leadership role at FAU she served as Graduate Program Director/Coordinator and was instrumental in developing curriculum changes that ultimately helped the college attain ranking from the US News and World Report.

In the clinical setting, she is known for her expertise in caring for patients with diabetes and has certification for Advanced Diabetes Management (BC-ADM). At PHC she developed an inter-professional diabetes care team. Experience as a volunteer at an American Diabetes Association (ADA) Camp in New Hampshire allowed her to develop a local ADA day camp for youth with type one diabetes in Florida. Under her leadership as the nursing director, NP students were immersed in the minute to minute care required in the camp setting with youths that are often not able to participate in these activities due to the difficulty in managing blood glucose levels in a camp setting.