Dr. Ruby Dunlap, associate professor in the School of Nursing, was recently selected as a 2009-10 U.S. Fulbright Scholar for Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Uganda. Dunlap will be a guest lecturer in nursing at Uganda Christian University which is located 23 kilometers outside of Kampala, Uganda. She will also be conducting research on how standards of nursing are adapted to austere conditions.
“It is deeply humbling to be given this kind of trust,” Dunlap said. “I’m looking forward to collaborating in discovery and service with colleagues in Uganda and hope to represent Belmont and the Nashville community well in this assignment.”
Dr. Dunlap currently teaches Community Health Nursing and Gerontological Nursing at Belmont. She has been a full time nursing educator at Belmont since 1996. Over the past 12 years, she has supervised hundreds of Belmont students as they cared for refugees from Sudan and Somalia in the Nashville area.
She will be serving in a two-semester appointment, August 2009 through May 2010, at Uganda Christian University as a visiting professor in nursing and community health. Dr. Dunlap will also be conducting research on the application of standards of care when shortages of human and material resources exist. She will be attending an orientation program in Washington, D.C. in June. Dr. Dunlap will be accompanied by her husband, Robert Dunlap, and her father, Carl Wesselhoeft, a former missionary in Somalia.
Dr. Dunlap chose Uganda Christian University because of its nursing program and because it is a faith-based institution similar to Belmont. She spent 10 years of her childhood (1955-1966) in Somalia. Her childhood in East Africa combined with working with African refugees in Nashville has produced a passion for the African people. In 2007, she supervised 52 nursing students in community health as they designed a curriculum for a proposed new school of nursing in Mozambique.
