Conceptualizing the Role of a Strategist for Outreach and Indigenous Engagement to Lead Recruitment and Retention of Indigenous Students.

A number of universities have introduced Indigenous student-specific programming to improve recruitment. These programs target the needs of Indigenous students and often impart a sense of comfort or belonging that may be more difficult to obtain in a mainstream program. The University of Saskatchewan, College of Nursing, implemented a Learn Where You Live delivery model that challenged the university community to think differently about outreach and engagement. This is best described by redefining distance such that student services and supports would no longer be localized to a main campus but redesigned for distribution across the province. Sustaining this model meant the College leadership had to find new ways to support faculty to engage in teaching and learning opportunities that would be context relevant and aid student recruitment and retention. The new position of Strategist for Outreach and Indigenous Engagement was created to lead opportunities for faculty and staff to gain knowledge and expertise in policy development, negotiation and implementation for success in the distributed delivery model. The framework of Two-Eyed Seeing was adapted to guide the introduction and ongoing implementation (Bartlett et al. 2012).

Reshaping Policies to Achieve a Strategic Plan for Indigenous Engagement in Nursing Education.

Canadian universities are developing strategies to address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action. There has been much attention paid to the positivist, individualistic and Eurocentric foundations of nursing and its educational curricula, but limited focus on assessing organizational structures or engaging with stakeholders. Without both approaches, the success of new initiatives may be limited. The College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan implemented a "Learn Where You Live" model that demonstrated a sense of place by providing access and opportunity in rural, remote and northern regions of the province. Key to this initiative was the creation of the position of Strategist for Outreach and Indigenous Engagement, whose role it is to develop strategic initiatives designed to interpret and influence socio-political and policy-level system changes. This paper shares how adding a political scientist to nursing education created an interprofessional team by introducing new ways of thinking and being that have cultural relevance and understanding for a sustainable future.

Under the Same Sky: Connecting Students and Cultures through Circumpolar Nursing Education.

The recruitment and retention of health professionals in rural, remote, and northern regions is an ongoing challenge. The Northern Nursing Education Network brought together nursing students working in rural and remote regions of the circumpolar north in Innovative Learning Institute on Circumpolar Health (ILICH) events to create opportunities for shared learning and expose both students and faculty to local and traditional knowledge that informs health behaviors specific to regions with Indigenous populations. Using participant experience data extracted from program discussions, evaluations, and reflective notes conducted after ILICH events held in 2015⁻2017, this paper explores how these two-week institutes can contribute to knowledge that is locally relevant yet transferable to rural areas across the circumpolar north. The findings clustered around experiences related to (1) Language as a barrier and an enabler; (2) shared values and traditions across borders; (3) differences and similarities in nursing practice; (4) new perspectives in nursing; and (5) building sustainable partnerships. Students learned more about their own culture as well as others by exploring the importance of language, cultures, and health inequity on different continents. Shared values and traditional knowledge impacted student perspectives of social determinants of health that are highly relevant for nurses working in the circumpolar north.

Linking Learners for Life Where They Live (L4): Developing a Global Health Initiative for Student Engagement.

This article describes a graduate student learning experience as part of an international nursing collaborative working together to develop an academic partnership for global health education in the circumpolar north. The experience provided an opportunity to conduct a pilot project in a rural, remote, northern community using an indigenous, global context. Building on the Canadian-Siberian collaboration, the graduate student attended an academic institution in Siberia, where she focused on the sharing of expertise, knowledge, and insights in order to address the challenges facing indigenous people in achieving optimal health and well-being in the circumpolar north. The goal was to create a foundation for "putting health into place" in a northern context, with the hope of creating shared learning opportunities for undergraduate students between the 2 countries.The intent is to share the approach used by the graduate student to use a conceptual model to assess the feasibility of creating a context-relevant global health experience for northern nursing education.