Taking the time to know each student Intelligence, passion energize her class
Heather Moore, RN, has a solution to the nursing crunch: Clone her most inspiring teacher. "If every professor were like Stephanie Chalupka, there would not be a nursing shortage," Moore writes in her nomination of Chalupka, a professor in the Department of Nursing at UMass Lowell.
Chalupka's achievements in the field of occupational and environmental health have earned other awards, including a 2004 Public Service Award from the University of Massachusetts for her "Cross Cultural Approach to Healthy Homes," a federally funded project to help identify and remove environmental hazards in the homes of more than 1,000 refugee and immigrant families in Lowell. In April 2006, she received the Fellowship Award from the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, the highest peer recognition in her profession.
Moore, 32, describes Chalupka as the kind of teacher whose classes you want never to end. But her commitment goes far beyond the classroom. "She takes the time to know each person, and helps you find your path," Moore says, adding that Chalupka recently spent an hour on the phone coaching her for a job interview.
Chalupka's warmth and energy come across in a telephone conversation, as she talks about growing up in an immigrant Polish/Syrian family in central Massachusetts and following her admired older sister into nursing. Theirs was, she says, "a very traditional immigrant story," and, fortunately, given the limited range of choices available to her in the mid-1970s, Chalupka found in nursing a profession she has always loved. Her name, she notes, comes from her husband of 31 years, attorney Norman Chalupka, Jr., whose family is of Czech origin.
Chalupka's academic progress - a BS in nursing from Worcester State College, an MS in Community Health Nursing from Boston College, and an EdD from UMass Amherst - ran in tandem with a clinical career that took her into many areas of practice, from intensive care to pediatrics to home healthcare. Her decision to move into teaching, she says, was a tribute to the influence of the "magnificent nurse educators" at Worcester and Boston colleges, who opened her eyes to new vistas of academic and professional accomplishment.
Even while teaching and bringing up two children, a daughter, now 25, and a son, 22, Chalupka has always kept up her nursing practice. To serve her students well in a rapidly changing clinical environment, she says, "it's important that I stay current and have an understanding of the issues they'll face."
Although Moore is an experienced staff nurse, she had not thought of herself as a potential leader before coming into Chalupka's orbit. Now, she feels ready to rise to new challenges. "There's just something about Stephanie that makes you want to be a better nurse," says Moore.
Nursing department chair Professor Karen Melillo agrees. She has known Chalupka since she joined the faculty as an associate professor in the fall of 2000, and describes her as a remarkable master teacher. "When she's with a small group of students, it's as if they're the only people in the world," says Melillo. Chalupka sets the bar high, and her record of academic publications, her national and international profile in the field, and her ability to win funding for large-scale projects energize students and colleagues alike. If students like Heather Moore find Chalupka inspiring, Chalupka returns the compliment. "I find college students so energizing," she says. "These students are the future of the profession that I love."
