Assistant Professor

Email: th1591@hunter.cuny.edu

Telephone: 212-396-7206

Office: Brookdale Campus, W427

Tara Heagele, PhD, RN, FAAN is an assistant professor at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing at Hunter College, the City University of New York. She has clinical nursing experience in telemetry, emergency department, critical care transport, and post-anesthesia care unit nursing. As a member of her local Medical Reserve Corps, Dr. Heagele volunteers her nursing expertise to her community during extreme weather events and public health emergencies. She holds several certifications in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery and has presented her research at the American Academy of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau, and the World Association of Disaster and Emergency Medicine conferences. She started her program of research by exploring household emergency preparedness of elderly and medically frail community members qualitatively, with the hope of better understanding the reasons why people do or do not prepare for disasters to inform intervention development. Dr. Heagele, as part of a team of disaster nurse researchers, developed a global, interdisciplinary, evidence-based, valid, reliable, all-hazards household emergency preparedness instrument. She is pilot testing the instrument in various populations to gather additional validity data, while assessing level of household emergency preparedness of these populations and evaluating effectiveness of household emergency preparedness interventions. Dr. Heagele is especially interested in the role that nurses have in mobilizing the community to prepare for and recover from extreme weather events and disasters. She hopes that her disaster nursing research will ultimately save lives and promote disaster-related community resilience.

Dr. Heagele serves in leadership roles in her professional nursing associations. She enjoys monitoring healthcare trends, writing letters and making phone calls to legislators, and being an advocate for nursing immensely.

Dr. Heagele believes in providing and teaching the most current evidence-based care. She takes pride in being a life-long learner and consumer of nursing research. Her teaching experience includes pre- and post-licensure nursing and interdisciplinary healthcare audiences. She believes in utilizing service-learning projects, web enhanced activities, and simulation in addition to traditional teaching methods to keep learners interested and engaged, both inside and outside the classroom setting.

Education

PhD, Nursing, Rutgers University - Newark, 2018

MSN, Nursing Education, Monmouth University, 2012

BSN, Nursing, The College of New Jersey, 2005

Honors and Awards

Fellow, American Academy of Nursing, 2024

Manuscript of Exceptional Merit Award, Academy of Neonatal Nursing & Springer Publishing, 2022

Superstar Student Support Award, Hunter-Bellevue Student Nurses’ Association, Hunter College, 2022, 2023

MSN Leadership Award, Monmouth University, 2012

Sigma Theta Tau International, Lambda Delta Chapter, Monmouth University, 2009

Regina Sanchez Porter Award: Excellence in Community Health Nursing, The College of New Jersey, 2005

Research Areas

Grants and Publications