Nursing professor at Pikeville moves up to dean

Karen Damron

Karen Damron, an associate professor in the Elliott School of Nursing at the University of Pikeville, is the new dean of the school.

Damron was raised in El Paso moving to Pikeville in 1993, and has taught full-time at the university since 1998, a news release said. Before becoming an educator, Damron worked full-time as an RN in obstetrics and neonatal intensive care in hospitals in Texas and Maine. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, an M.S. from Bellarmine University and a B.S. from the University of Texas at El Paso, all in nursing. She and her husband, Larry, live in Pikeville and have four sons and three grandchildren.

In 2010, the Mellon Foundations named Damron a fellow to the Salzburg Seminar in Austria. She earned UPike’s William Wade and Helen Record Walker Teaching Excellence Award in 2014 and was awarded a pre-doctoral faculty fellowship by the Appalachian College Association for the 2015-2016 academic year. Her research interests include perinatal smoking and factors that impact a woman’s smoking status in pregnancy.