Kimberly D. Acquaviva, PhD, MSW, CSE, FNAP is the Betty Norman Norris Endowed Professor at the University of Virginia School of Nursing as well as a Provost's Office Faculty Fellow. Before she was recruited to UVA in August 2019, she spent fifteen years as a faculty member at the George Washington University School of Nursing and the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. During her time at GW, she served as both founding faculty and the inaugural Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the School of Nursing.
A year and a half after she published LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice & Palliative Care: A Practical Guide to Transforming Professional Practice in 2017, Kim learned that her wife Kathy had ovarian cancer. Kim and Kathy spent the next six months sharing their experiences via social media and giving people a sense of what it's like to be living while dying. Shortly after Kathy died in August 2019, a New Yorker documentary film was made about Kim, Kathy, and their son Greyson.
Her latest book, The Handbook of LGBTQIA-Inclusive Hospice & Palliative Care, was published by Columbia University Press in October 2023.
Dr. Acquaviva has a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, an M.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences. She is an AASECT-Certified Sexuality Educator.
New Yorker Magazine documentary: “Documenting Death.” Film by Sara Joe Wolansky. June 23, 2021. https://youtu.be/1i-TvqmjsBw
Watson, Douglas. (2021, June 23). “What’s it like to be dying?” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/what-is-it-like-to-be-dying
Prendergast, John. “Holding and Letting Go.” The Pennsylvania Gazette, 25 Feb. 2020, http://thepenngazette.com/holding-and-letting-go/.
Zeitlin, Dave. Finding Life in Death. 24 Feb. 2020, http://thepenngazette.com/finding-life-in-death/.
Stripling, Jack. “Death Is This Professor's Life's Work. When It Hit Close to Home, She Invited Everyone to Watch.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 Aug. 2019, www.chronicle.com/article/Death-Is-This-Professor-s/246904.
Aleccia, JoNel. “Kathy Brandt, A Hospice Expert Who Invited The World Into Her Own Last Days With Cancer, Dies.” Kaiser Health News, 5 Aug. 2019, http://khn.org/news/until-her-last-breath-hospice-expert-live-tweets-about-her-death-to-teach-others/.
“Palliative care power couple faces cancer at home” (NBC Online). Article by JoNel Alecia. May 15, 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/palliative-care-power-couple-faces-cancer-home-n1005516
My primary responsibility as a faculty member is to the students I teach – and by extension, to the patients and families those students will ultimately care for. Students are and will always be the primary reason for my existence as a professor – and for my School's existence as an institution of higher learning. Toward this end, I share my course evaluations publicly so that students and colleagues alike can see the quality of my teaching. Click on the name of a course to open the corresponding course evaluation.
University of Virginia School of Nursing
2024 - Fall NURS 4950: Distinguished Majors Seminar I
George Washington University
2006 - Fall HSCI 270: Intro to Research (no eval on file)
Photo by Sarah Cramer Shields
Free Expression & Free Inquiry
Both as an educator and a citizen, I'm committed to fostering free expression and free inquiry in the classroom. In fact, I consider that commitment to be a core component -- perhaps even the core component -- of my work as an educator. The following is an excerpt from UVA’s Statement on Free Expression and Free Inquiry:
“…the educational endeavor for students requires freedom to speak, write, inquire, listen, challenge, and learn, including through exposure to a range of ideas and cultivation of the tools of critical thinking and engagement. These tools are vital not only to students’ personal intellectual development but also to their futures as citizen leaders equipped to assess contending arguments and to contribute to societal progress. For all of these reasons, expression of ideas should be given the widest possible latitude.”
Every semester, I strive to get a 100% response rate on student course evaluations. Why? Because, as UVA's Statement on Free Expression and Free Inquiry reminds us, "All views, beliefs, and perspectives deserve to be articulated and heard free from interference." On my website in the section above, you can download and read course evaluation summaries -- including all of the student comments -- for every course I've taught since 2006. I've compiled relevant comments from my UVA course evaluations into this PDF so that you can get a sense of how students experience the classroom environment in the courses I teach:
Generative AI in Nursing: A Collection of Resources for Faculty. A gallery of resources compiled by K. Acquaviva at the request of UVA's Center for Teaching Excellence.