Networking Opportunities

Discussion - Week 1
COLLAPSE
Networking Opportunities
This week you begin to lay the foundation for your academic and professional success. Your efforts begin with a vision, which includes your own definition of success. Your vision may vary from those of your colleagues, but this does not mean you have to take these first steps alone.
Walden University and the College of Nursing also have a vision and mission, which include helping you to make your own vision a reality. Members of your new academic community, such as faculty, support teams, and fellow students, can also be helpful. Current practitioners and other members of the professional community can also help you to clarify your vision.
This week’s Discussion asks you to think about how the Walden mission and vision and the College of Nursing mission and vision apply to your professional and academic goals. You will also begin to identify individuals and teams that can help you along the way, as you begin to design the “blueprint”—your Academic Success and Professional Development Plan—that will guide you toward your own vision for academic and professional success.
To Prepare:
Review the Walden and the College of Nursing mission and vision statements, Walden’s goals and University Outcomes, and the MSN Program Learning Outcomes presented in this week's Learning Resources.
Reflect on your professional and academic goals as they relate to your program/specialization.
Consider how the information in these resources fit with your own goals and to your becoming a scholar-practitioner.
Also consider academic and professional individuals and teams that you may collaborate with in support of your efforts as a student at the University and as a professional within your organization and career.
By Day 3
Post a brief post introducing yourself to your colleagues. Include an explanation for how Walden’s vision, mission, goals, and social change initiatives relate to your professional and academic goals and to your becoming a scholar-practitioner. Also include an explanation for how the Walden MSN program outcomes and perspectives relate to your professional and academic goals and to your becoming a scholar-practitioner.
Support main post with 3 of more current, credible sources and cite source within content of posting and on a reference list in proper APA.
Vision, Mission, and Goals
Return to: Introduction
Vision
Walden University envisions a distinctively different 21st-century learning community where knowledge is judged worthy to the degree that it can be applied by its graduates to the immediate solutions of critical societal challenges, thereby advancing the greater global good.
Mission
Walden University provides a diverse community of career professionals with the opportunity to transform themselves as scholar-practitioners so that they can effect positive social change.
Goals
To provide multicontextual educational opportunities for career learners.
To provide innovative, learner-centered educational programs that recognize and incorporate the knowledge, skills, and abilities students bring into their academic programs.
To provide its programs through diverse process-learning approaches, all resulting in outcomes of quality and integrity.
To provide an inquiry/action model of education that fosters research, discovery, and critical thinking and that results in professional excellence.
To produce graduates who are scholarly, reflective practitioners and agents of positive social change.
Social Change
Walden University defines positive social change as a deliberate process of creating and applying ideas, strategies, and actions to promote the worth, dignity, and development of individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, cultures, and societies. Positive social change results in the improvement of human and social conditions.
This definition of positive social change provides an intellectually comprehensive and socially constructive foundation for the programs, research, professional activities, and products created by the Walden academic community.
In addition, Walden supports positive social change through the development of principled, knowledgeable, and ethical scholar-practitioners, who are and will become civic and professional role models by advancing the betterment of society.
University Outcomes
Walden University strives to produce graduates with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to:
1. Facilitate positive social change where they work, in their communities, and in society.
2. Use their knowledge to positively impact their profession, communities, and society.
3. Demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning.
4. Apply their learning to specific problems and challenges in their workplace and professional settings.
5. Demonstrate information literacy.*
*Information literacy is defined as the ability to know when there is a need for information, and being able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand.
6. Demonstrate an understanding of the methods of inquiry used in their professional or academic field.
7. Practice legal and ethical integrity in their professional work.
8. Effectively communicate their ideas and the rationale behind them to others.
9. Support diversity and multiculturalism within their profession, communities, and society.

University Values
Quality • Integrity • Student-Centeredness
Values
Three values—quality, integrity, and student-centeredness—are the core of the university and the touchstones for action at all levels of the organization. They demand high standards of excellence, uncompromising openness and honesty, and primary attention to the progress of our students. These values and principles give Walden University its unique identity and underpin the Walden University mission.
Quality
Walden University believes that quality and integrity are the cornerstones of all academic processes.
Walden University believes in innovation and flexibility in the conception and delivery of its educational programs, and that there are many different academic routes to achieve quality and integrity.
Integrity
Walden University believes that education and social change are fundamental to the provision and maintenance of democratic ideals and principles, especially that of the common good.
Walden University believes that its learners effect positive social change when they behave as reflective or scholarly practitioners.
Walden University believes that the inquiry/action model fosters critical thinking and underpins research and discovery for reflective practitioners (bachelor’s and master’s students) and scholar-practitioners (doctoral students). This model provides the framework for teaching, learning, and assessment.
Student-Centeredness
Walden University believes that all adult learners should have innovative educational access, especially those who are without opportunity in other venues.
Walden University believes that academic programs must be learner-centered, incorporating learners’ prior knowledge and allowing them to focus their academic work on their needs and interests.
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Required Readings
Nurse.org. (n.d.). List of nursing organizations. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://nurse(dot)org/orgs.shtml
Schmidt, K. (n.d.). 5 reasons nurses should engage in professional networking [Blog post]. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://blog(dot)bluepipes(dot)com/5-reasons-nurses-should-take-professional-networking-seriously/
Walden University (n.d.). Connect to Walden. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://www(dot)waldenu(dot)edu/connect
Walden University. (n.d.). College of Nursing. Retrieved October June 5, 2020, from https://www(dot)waldenu(dot)edu/about/colleges-schools/college-of-nursing
Review the College of Nursing's vision and mission.
Walden University. (n.d.). Walden University catalog. Retrieved October 4, 2019, from https://catalog(dot)waldenu(dot)edu
Select College of Nursing, then Master of Science in Nursing (MSN). Review the MSN Learning Outcomes on this page.
Walden University. (n.d.). Walden University catalog. Retrieved October 4, 2019, from https://catalog(dot)waldenu(dot)edu
Select Introduction, then the link "Vision, Mission, and Goals" under the Introduction header. Review Walden's vision, mission, and goals.
Walden University. (n.d.). Writing Center. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://academicguides(dot)waldenu(dot)edu/writingcenter
Wofford, P. (2018, May 24). 10 networking tips for nurses who hate networking. Retrieved from https://nurse(dot)org/articles/tips-for-nurse-networking/