Heyward Michael Dreher

Dr. Heyward Michael Dreher most recently served as the Interim Dean of the School of Health Sciences 2022--2025 and Acting Chair of the Department of Nursing (Fall 2022-Fall 2023) at the College of Staten Island. Previously, he was the Associate Provost at Medgar Evers College in CUNY, and Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Professions and Associate VP for Healthcare Innovation at the College of New Rochelle. He received his AS, BS, and Master of Nursing degrees at the University of South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in Nursing Science at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, and completed a 2-yr Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied sleep in medical and psychiatric illness. He spent 17 years at Drexel University in Philadelphia where he was a teacher, administrator, and scholar and was promoted to Full Professor.

Dr. Dreher is nationally and internationally known as a nursing and healthcare innovator. At Drexel, he developed the fifth Doctor of Nursing Practice degree in the US and the shortest accelerated second-degree nursing program in the US. This 11-month program routinely achieved NCLEX scores above 95%. He also developed an MSN in Nursing Innovation. Dr. Dreher is the co-author of 7 books, three of which won an AJN Book-of-the-Year Award. His most recent book was Dreher, H. M. & Glasgow, M. E. Smith, Dahnke, M.D., & Cotter, V. DNP Role Development for Doctoral Advanced Nursing Practice, 3e, published in 2024 . He has served as Associate Editor of Holistic Nursing Practice, writing a column on “Innovation, Health, & Healing.” In 2010 he was appointed as the only non-UK citizen to the UK Council on Graduate Education’s 2011 Report on Professional Doctorates Review Panel. He has been funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Center for American Nurses, HRSA, and various other agencies. He is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing and the Academy of Nursing Education.

The proudest moments in his career are all about students. He mentored 5 undergraduate nursing majors at Drexel to publish, as first authors, in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, he led a team of RN/BSN students and a Public Health physician in Philadelphia who treated the first patient with SARS (or the bird flu) in the state, to publish the first article in the nursing literature on this virus. He is a native of South Carolina and resides on Staten Island.