Keyser Campus Chair awarded tenure, promoted to associate professor
Dr. April Shapiro, PhD, RN, CNE, Chair, WVU School of Nursing: Potomac State Department on the WVU Keyser Campus, has been awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.
Dr. Shapiro has been a registered professional nurse for 32 years. She began teaching nursing in 1999 (practical and associate levels), finished her PhD degree in nursing through the WVU School of Nursing in May 2017, and began teaching with WVU (bachelor level) in fall of that year.
She currently teaches pharmacology and evidence-based practice/research at the undergraduate level and advanced health policy and ethics at the PhD level. She has been actively involved in curriculum development and mentoring faculty and students, including Honors and Honors EXCEL students.
In addition to teaching, Dr. Shapiro’s program of research focuses on continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) adherence among patients diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. For her dissertation study, she developed and tested an intervention known as CPAP-SAVER and continues to conduct research to further inform CPAP adherence intervention, with published book chapters and articles around her program of research.
She has provided service to the university in many ways, but especially by developing new programs within the School of Nursing to promote the growth and expansion of nursing, including traditional (Keyser), fast-track (Bridgeport and Martinsburg), and LPN to BSN (Keyser) pathways.
Dr. Shapiro was awarded the Dean’s Spirit Award for leadership in 2019 and a WVU Values Coin for accountability in 2022. She recently received the Ruth and Robert Kuhn Nursing Faculty Research Award for a secondary data analysis she is conducting on a national dataset to examine the mediating effect of mood state on sleep factors, CPAP adherence, and health-related quality of life.
“I am so thankful to my teaching and research mentors and Dean Hulsey for their guidance over these past six years as I progressed on the tenure track," Shapiro said. "I am so proud to be a faculty member with the School of Nursing and look forward to continued growth and development in my roles as a tenured faculty member, researcher, and Department Chair.”