NLN Honors Two Outstanding Leaders in Nursing Education with President’s Award

NLN Honors Two Outstanding Leaders in Nursing Education with President’s Award

Awards Presentation Will Be Held at the 2025 NLN Education Summit, September 17-19 in Orlando, Florida

Washington, DC – The National League for Nursing will honor two prominent nurse educators as winners of the 2025 NLN President’s Award. This distinctive and high honor recognizes outstanding leaders in nursing education whose lifetime career achievements deserve widespread public and professional acclaim. This year’s honorees are:

• Dr. Andrea Lindell, RN, BSN, MSN, PhD, ANEF, former vice provost and dean emerita of the College of Nursing at Walden University
• Dr. Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, PhD, APRN-CNP, EBP-C, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, CEO and founder of COPE2Thrive, LLC, and president and co-founder of EBPSolutions, LLC
  

They will accept the award during a special presentation at the 2025 NLN Education Summit in Orlando, Florida, September 17-19. NLN Chair Patricia Sharpnack, DNP, RN, CNE, NEA-BC, ANEF, FAAN, Dean and Strawbridge Professor at the Breen School of Nursing and Health Professions at Ursuline College in Ohio, said, “Congratulations on this recognition to Drs. Lindell and Melnyk for their incredible contributions to nursing education over the years and through many different areas of influence. They are visionary nursing deans, caring mentors, leaders of professional associations, renowned experts, authors, and so much more. What a wonderful testament to their powerful impact on nursing education.” 

NLN President and CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, said, “The National League for Nursing is proud to honor these two outstanding colleagues, whose many accomplishments reflect their decades of leadership and impact on generations of nursing education graduates.”

Prior to joining Walden University in March 2013 as dean of the College of Nursing, while also serving as laureate health sciences specialist for the Health Sciences Laureate International Universities, Andrea Lindell co-founded and served as interim dean of the College of Health Sciences at the University of Cincinnati. Following nine years in that role, she served as dean and professor at the university’s College of Nursing, as well as associate senior vice president for academic affairs in the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Her tenure there and at Walden was distinguished by the seeding of international collaborations with universities in Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City; and Kyoto, Japan, among others. Since retiring, she has consulted nationally and internationally, sharing her expertise in program development, curriculum design and implementation, program evaluation strategies, and accreditation readiness.

Inspirational speaker, author, leader, innovator, and entrepreneur, Bernadette Melnyk, helped put evidence-based practice on the map, while also gaining distinction as an expert in mental health, population health and well-being, intervention research, and organizational culture change. Dr. Melnyk has led the evidence-based practice (EBP) movement in nursing since the late 1990s, and her book, Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare: A Guide to Best Practice, is widely used in baccalaureate and advanced degree nursing and health sciences curricula across the U.S. and globally.

The founder of the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing during her long tenure in various senior administrative and teaching roles at the Ohio State University, Dr. Melnyk was the inaugural Helene Fuld Health Trust Professor of Evidence-based Practice in OSU’s College of Nursing.

Her two educational consulting practices, COPE2Thrive, LLC and EBPSolutions, LLC, have continued to advance her influence in evidence-based practice. COPE, a series of evidence-based cognitive-behavioral skills-building programs she developed to treat depression and anxiety, are being used by primary care practices in 50 states, as well as in elementary, middle, and high schools and universities nationwide and globally.  

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