Dawn M. Bowker

Courses

• NRS 3400: Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice
• NRS 4200: Promoting a Culture of Health and Wellness
• NRS 4400: Population Health Nursing
• NRS 4420: Population Health Nursing, Practicum

Resources

• Social Determinants of Health in Nursing Education: Integrating Into Curriculum and Practice [textbook]
• OpenStax Nursing Collection
• OpenRN Collection 

Case Study

Dawn Bowker serves as the Director of Nursing Education and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Nursing program at Iowa State University. Her expertise centers on nursing education, open educational resources (OER), and open pedagogy, with a particular focus on the social determinants of health (SDOH) and their integration into nursing curricula. Dr. Bowker has co-authored an openly licensed SDOH nursing education textbook, co-published an OER workbook in 2023, and completed a year-long OER Community of Practice for healthcare educators hosted by Iowa State University's Open Access Team. She has co-led the redesign of entire nursing courses around openly licensed content and continues to advance affordable, open, and student-centered learning across the RN-to-BSN program.

As a credentialed Certified Nurse Educator, she designs curricula that engage students as co-creators of knowledge rather than passive consumers of content, leading course-wide redesigns that replace commercial textbooks with high-quality OER and open-pedagogy assignments. This work removes cost barriers and expands access for working nurses while embedding the social determinants of health, active-learning strategies, and authentic, practice-based assessment throughout the curriculum. Through open pedagogy, Bowker positions students' clinical experience at the center of their learning, inviting them to create shareable, real-world work that reinforces research literacy and systems thinking. Bowker aims to prepare current and future nurses to think critically, lead within complex health systems, and apply their learning directly to the patients and communities they serve — ultimately advancing equitable, high-impact nursing education.