Trish L. Richard

Dr Trish Richard is the Interim Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Assistant Dean of Informatics, Distance Education for the UTMB School of Nursing. Dr. Richard received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1976 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a MasterÂ’s of Science in Nursing in 1978 with an adult specialty. In 1992, she earned a Ph.D. in Nursing from Texas WomanÂ’s University. Dr. Richard began her teaching career at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1978; from 1980-1981 she taught in the nursing program at the University of Alabama, Birmingham; and then returned to the Tuscaloosa campus in 1981. In 1985, she joined the faculty at the University of Texas Medical Branch School of Nursing (SON) at Galveston.

Dr. Richard’s research interests include creative thinking ability and its use by nurses, technology and evaluation. Currently, she is involved in research associated with web-based courses and information technology. She received funding from the RGK Foundation of Austin, Texas to develop the “Nursing Web-Based Distance Education Program” which provided much of the foundation for the web-based programs at the SON. Dr. Richard is currently funded to study “Improving Student Retention in a BSN Program Using Information Technology”. This study is designed to investigate the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in an undergraduate program for information retrieval and the effect of technology, organizational and time management skills on the retention rate of students.
In addition to her nursing preparation, Dr. Richard has experience in computer functions, applications, and information management as well. She has oversight for the School of Nursing Multimedia Lab which facilitates the integrated testing and scoring programs for all courses in the SON; develops the SON website and intranet; facilitates the faculty/staff to students electronic mail communication; coordinates the computer literacy activities of the faculty and staff; manages the integrated database. Dr. Richard has been involved with and consulted on other projects with regard to information technology across campus. She also serves on several university committees and taskforces involving information and web-based technology affecting employees and students.