Associate Dean of Research, Professor
Education
Biography
Dr. Robin Bartlett joined the Capstone College of Nursing in 2019. She previously taught for many years and served as Director of the Ph.D. in nursing program for four years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Prior to that Dr. Bartlett’s clinical focus area was the psychiatric and mental health inpatient setting, where she served in staff nurse and leadership roles. She has also worked in the community focused on the care of persons with psychiatric and mental health issues.
Gaining inspiration from her clinical practice experiences, Dr. Bartlett’s primary research focus has been in understanding and prevention of risk behaviors, primarily among underserved youth. Broadly she is interested in rural health research. She has conducted intervention studies focused on the prevention of risk behaviors that could lead to negative health outcomes for adolescent girls. She has also conducted nursing education research. Other areas of research/methods interest include parenting, interdisciplinary research, health systems research, analyses of existing data, and community-based participatory research.
She is funded with a team of collaborators (Paige Johnson, current PI) with a Science Education Partnership Award from NIGMS/NIH to replicate West Virginia’s Health Science & Technology Academy (HSTA) in Alabama. HSTA-AL is a program designed to bring more students from rural areas to nursing, the nurse faculty role, the nurse scientist role and to other biomedical professions from among rural, often economically disadvantaged students. This same team, along with other Capstone College of Nursing faculty members, were also funded by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (Bartlett, PI) to design and conduct a program entitled “A Bridge to College Success for Rural Alabamians” or Bridges. The Bridges program supported recent high school graduates who had been accepted to The University of Alabama and had declared nursing as their intended major to build skills and knowledge to help them be successful in their pursuit of the BSN.
Dr. Bartlett’s recent teaching experiences have been with MSN students pursuing degrees in nursing administration, working with DNP students on capstone projects, and teaching PhD courses including quantitative methods and the various roles of the PhD-prepared nurse. She has led and served on several dissertation committees.
Dr. Bartlett is actively involved with several organizations. She has held elected leadership positions with Sigma Theta Tau International at the local, regional and international levels. She is active in the Southern Nursing Research Society having served in elected positions with that organization. She was also a member of Phi Kappa Phi.
Across her career Dr. Bartlett has received awards in teaching, leadership and scholarship/research. These include being recognized as a “Great 100” nurse in North Carolina and the D. Jean Wood Nursing Scholarship Award from SNRS. In 2023 she was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and in 2024 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Nursing.
Dr. Bartlett has been married for over 35 years to Ken Byrd, a retired college professor. Between them they have 4 children and 7 grandchildren living across several states along the eastern seaboard.