Dr. Mary Polchert’s background is in critical care, home care, and management, having graduated from Deaconess Hospital in 1979 and competing her BSN and CCRN in 1989 and MSN in Education/Administration from Marquette University in 1995. Inspired by her professors, she obtained her PhD in nursing from UW-Milwaukee in 2006 and has been at Marian since. She hopes to inspire nurses to continue their professional development. Her research focuses on health disparities, self-efficacy, health competence, cultural care, the affective domain of learning in nurses, and NCLEX-Success. She has presented different research studies on these topics at professional nursing conferences and has traveled to Nicaragua for a medical mission. She served as research assistant while a graduate student and as a parish nurse. At Marian she has taught fundamentals and nursing research for undergraduates; research, theory, informatics, and public health in the hybrid/online RN-BSN program; and Parish Nursing. In the MSN/FNP program she has taught quantitative research, qualitative research, advanced nursing research, and evidence based practice. Recently, she developed and delivered the new online foundations of advanced nursing practice course for the MSN/FNP program. She has been married for 38 years, has two children, and owns an active sheep-a-doodle puppy.
