This is a short test of the Harper College alert system
Dr. Megan E. McDowell
Adjunct faculty
Brenau University
Co-Founder
Track My Clinical
Dr. Megan E. McDowell has dedicated her career to teaching the next generation of nurses, now as an assistant professor at Brenau University.
She started as a nursing student at Harper College, where the faculty she encountered set her on her way to one day become a teacher herself.
“One of the biggest strengths Harper has is its staff and faculty,” McDowell said. “They absolutely changed my trajectory, not just as a nurse but as an educator.”
McDowell credits former Harper instructor Beth Nudelman for not only teaching her how to be a nurse, but also for inspiring her to work in higher education.
“She was invested in me as a student. She showed different ways of teaching different concepts,” McDowell said. “She was fun and she was funny. She made learning exciting. So, as I became a nurse educator, that’s what really inspired me.”
McDowell graduated from Harper in 2003 and later earned advanced nursing degrees from Northern Illinois University and Brenau University. From 2012 to 2020, she taught nursing at Harper, where a state-of-the-art Center for Interprofessional Simulation and Innovation helped make lessons more real for students and prepare them for work in the real world.
“It allowed me as an educator to provide these experiences for our students that were just like being in a hospital,” she said.
Recently, McDowell co-founded Track My Clinical, a technology platform designed to modernize clinical education management for nursing programs nationwide. Her scholarship and advocacy have focused on helping healthcare professionals identify and respond to human trafficking, work she has shared through numerous peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and collaboration with state policymakers.
For McDowell, Harper set the bar high from the start.
“They expect absolute excellence in nursing. They had extremely high expectations,” McDowell said. “They set the gold standard for what it means to be a nurse and how to aspire to be one.”