Suja P. Davis

Suja P. Davis is the recipient of the 2019 Margaret Gould Tyson Scholarship. She is a 3rd year PhD student at the College of Nursing, East Carolina University, NC, as well as an Assistant Professor at the School of Nursing, UN -CH, N.C. Suja received her BSc Nursing (Honors) from College of Nursing, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, her MS Nursing Degree from the College of Nursing, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India and her Post- Masters in Nursing Informatics from the School of Nursing, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Additionally, she obtained a Nursing Education certificate from UNC-CH and a Diversity Leader Certificate from UNC Hospitals.

A nurse for 21 years, Suja has worked mainly in acute care settings including GI surgery, acute rehabilitation and long term care. In addition to being a bedside nurse, she realized her taste in teaching and took on the role of preceptor for new nurses and nursing students who joined the GI surgery unit. Suja started her teaching career as a Clinical Instructor at the School of Nursing, UNC-CH and was promoted to the role of Assistant Professor in 2012. She primarily teaches at the undergraduate program and supervises many undergraduate students with their Honor’s project. Additionally, she has served on a number of committees within the School of Nursing at Chapel Hill.

Ms Davis is a member of a number of professional organizations including Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI), National League for Nursing (NLN), Southern Nursing Research Society (SNRS), American Nurse’s Informatics Association (ANIA), and Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). She has published four manuscripts and three are in press. She presented a poster with the help of her research advisor at the 33rd SNRS Conference at Orlando, FL on February 28, 2019. Her poster was selected as the best student poster by the bio-behavioral research interest group.

Suja’s future plans include continuing in an academic research career, broadening her scope of teaching to graduate and other interdisciplinary courses, and acquiring the skills to conduct independent research to become a nurse scientist. Her research interests include nursing education, symptom management, big data and modeling, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Her doctoral dissertation will focus on the impact of fatigue among IBD population.