Director at Large

Cheryl van Daalen-Smith, PhD, RN, Canadian Certified Nurse Educator

York University, Toronto

Caledon East, Ontario

Canada

Educational Biography

PhD, University of Toronto

MA, University of Toronto

RN, BScN., Ryerson University

Professional Biography

Dr. Cheryl van Daalen-Smith started her beloved career as an acute care Pediatric Nurse and soon saw the necessity of ensuring the voice of the child was heard, and of the value of networking between nurses. To that end, she became the first nurse on the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children and founded the Ontario and Canadian Association of Pediatric Nurses fostering connections and promoting standards of practice that embraced children as citizens in their own rights. Her career shifted to working as a Public Health Nurse involving working with children, youth and women on a 1:1 basis, as well as enacting principles of community development in order to collaboratively work towards the social determinants of health for all.

Now a professor at Canada's York University, Dr. van-Daalen Smith is teaching nursing students in Baccalaureate, Masters and Doctoral Programs about the values and approaches of community health nursing — where social justice, upstream thinking, and broad conceptions of quality of life build toward future nurses understanding their role as global health advocates.

Dr. van Daalen-Smith is thrilled to join the INDEN Board as she continues her exploration of how doctoral nursing education can make a difference for individuals, communities, and populations rendered vulnerable through systemic structures and views. For as she is often heard reflecting her cherished students, “If not us, then who?” She spends her ‘spare’ time caring for a menagerie of cast-away farm animals and fostering critical nursing scholarship through Witness: the Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse.