Announcing Georgetown’s New Dean for the School of Nursing

December 15, 2021

Dear Members of the Georgetown University Community:

It is my privilege to announce that Roberta Waite, EdD, PMHCNS, RN, MSN, ANEF, FAAN, a transformative nurse leader, will join the Georgetown community next year as the Dean of our School of Nursing. She will begin May 1 as a professor of nursing and then assume her role as dean on July 1.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the members of our search committee for their engagement throughout this process, with special appreciation to Kathleen Maguire-Zeiss, PhD, for her leadership as chair.

A tenured professor of nursing in Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions and associate dean of community-centered health and wellness and academic integration, Dr. Waite will lead our new School of Nursing at this important moment and further elevate our longstanding work in nursing education, which began at Georgetown in 1903. She will help to advance our work to support formation, inquiry, and the common good—bringing her expertise as the executive director of Drexel’s Stephen & Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services in Philadelphia, which seeks to “treat the whole person” by providing primary care, behavioral health, dental services, and health and wellness programs to individuals and families living in public housing and underserved groups in its community.

A fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Academy of Nursing Education, Dr. Waite has a strong record of extramural funding and scholarly publication. Her advanced practice work is as a psychiatric-mental health clinical nurse specialist. Over her career, she has engaged with issues of racial justice, the structural determinants of health and health equity, and behavioral health and wellness. She has served on Drexel’s Antiracism Task Force, a National Advisory Council for Nursing Research working group, the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing, and the MAP Health Equity Advisory Group of the National Quality Forum.

In 2014, she was recognized by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation as an emerging national leader in medical and nursing education, and with the support of this award, established the Macy Undergraduate Leadership Fellows Program, a program for undergraduate students in public health, nursing and the health professions focused on leadership, interdisciplinary learning, ethics, cultural sensitivity, and health equity.

Dr. Waite serves on the Trinity Health Board of Directors and is a member of Catholic Health Ministries. She is also a board member of the American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders and Family Process Institute. She completed her doctorate in education at Widener University, where she concentrated on higher education administration leadership. She later held a T32 post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Disparities. She earned her master’s in nursing, with a focus on adult psychiatric-mental health nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and her bachelor’s in nursing at Widener.

I remain grateful to John Monahan, JD, (C’83 L’87) as he continues his service as the interim dean of the School of Nursing and Health Studies, while we prepare for the launch of the School of Nursing and the School of Health this coming year.

Please join me in extending Dr. Waite a warm welcome to the Georgetown community.

Sincerely,

John J. DeGioia