Dr. Maria Shirey

Maria Shirey became the fifth dean of the UAB School of Nursing in June 2022 and is the first Hispanic dean of nursing in Alabama and the first minority to lead the School in its 75-year history. She began her career as a bedside cardiovascular critical care nurse and advanced through leadership roles as administrator, service line director, hospital vice president, and entrepreneur; as founding director of the Magnet Program for Excellence in Nursing Services at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Indiana, she led the organization to Magnet designation. She has held adjunct and full-time faculty roles teaching nursing leadership and management across BSN, MSN, DNP, and PhD programs and is a sought-after mentor to doctoral students. She joined UAB in 2013 as a tenured Professor and Assistant Dean for Clinical and Global Partnerships, served as Chair of the Department of Acute, Chronic and Continuing Care (2015–2019), then as Associate Dean for Clinical and Global Partnerships and inaugural holder of the Jane H. Brock – Florence Nightingale Endowed Professorship in Nursing; as Dean she holds the Fay B. Ireland Endowed Chair in Nursing. Her research focuses on leadership science and health services outcomes and on interprofessional collaborative practice models to advance care access and health equity for vulnerable populations; she has brought more than $20 million in extramural funding to UAB since 2013. She is a Fellow of the National Academies of Practice, Academy of Nursing Education, American Academy of Nursing, and American College of Healthcare Executives, and has received the American Organization for Nursing Leadership Nurse Researcher Award and the Association for Leadership Science in Nursing Suzanne Smith Memorial Award for Scholarly Writing Excellence.