06/01/2026
Follow our Magnet® Monday series and meet the certified nurses who inspire excellence across UT Medical. Today, we're spotlighting Sherri!
As Nursing Professional Development Coordinator at UT Medical Center, Sherri, MSN, RN, CV-BC, NPD-BC, brings the heart of an educator and the perspective of a second-career nurse to her role: helping shape the next generation of caregivers who will continue UT Medical’s legacy of excellence.
Sherri has been part of the UT Medical family since 2020. She describes her current position in Nursing Education as a calling and explains, “I am a second-career nurse and did a lot of teaching in my last career. When I started precepting and working with nursing students, I realized how many skills carried over. Nursing education turned out to be the perfect combination of everything I love.”
In 2025, Sherri completed the CAPES Academy, a program designed to strengthen nurse education in medically underserved areas of the Southeast. “CAPES helps nurse educators become better teachers so we can, in turn, produce more high-quality nurses,” she says. For Sherri, the experience was transformative. “The CAPES trainers became mentors and encouraged me to share my projects at conferences,” she says. “The program gave me the confidence and tools to grow as an educator and to connect with others who share the same mission.”
Through CAPES, Sherri attended national conferences where she learned from other nurse educators and began presenting her own work. She was later selected to become a CAPES Advanced Trainer, bringing the curriculum home to East Tennessee.
“I saw that new clinical instructors were starting their roles without much training in how to teach,” she explains. “So, I offered two Clinical Instructor Train-the-Trainer courses using the CAPES model.”
While Sherri’s work takes place behind the scenes, she says its impact ultimately reaches every patient.
“My CAPES Academy training helps me care for patients through others,” she says. “The better I am as a nurse educator, the better prepared our nurses are, and that translates directly into safer, more compassionate care.”
Sherri continues to mentor new nurses and instructors with the same passion that inspired her own second career. “Education is my way of giving back,” she says. “By helping others grow, I’m helping our patients and our community thrive.”
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