Schievelbein named 2026 Outstanding Researcher for SDSU’s College of Nursing

Danielle Schievelbein was named the South Dakota State University College of Nursing’s 2026 Outstanding Researcher at the Celebration of Faculty Excellence in February.

An assistant professor, Schievelbein first learned of the award in an email from Dean Mary Anne Krogh. She said she was surprised and shocked when the news showed up in her inbox.

It likely wasn’t a surprise to the rest of the college. With her interest in several research projects and in teaching the next generation of nurses and researchers, Schievelbein has left a lasting impact as a leader and mentor to numerous students and faculty members.

Graduating high-quality nurses at SDSU

Schievelbein has been a cornerstone of the College of Nursing for some time. She earned three nursing degrees, all from SDSU. That includes a bachelor’s in 2008, a master’s in 2013 and a Ph.D. in 2020. She’s been a full-time faculty member since 2014.

Schievelbein said she chose SDSU because its nursing program was No. 1 in the state. 

“I knew I’d get a very good education when I came here,” she said.

That was proven correct when she explored nursing careers after finishing her undergraduate education.

“At the end of every interview, I would hear people say, ‘Oh, well, you’re from SDSU. We know you’re going to be a good nurse,’” she said.

After she worked in the field for a few years, the halls of the university were beckoning her back.

“I wanted to come back, and I wanted to make a difference. And I wanted to make sure that we were still graduating good, high-quality nurses every single year,” Schievelbein said.

Currently, Schievelbein teaches Research Quality and Safety in Nursing along with a few graduate courses.

“My goal with my undergrad classes is that I get the students to realize how important research is,” she said. “I know not everybody’s going to come in and do a Ph.D., but even if they don’t want to advance their education, maybe they’ll want to be a part of research in the hospital in some way, shape or form.”

Schievelbein described a good day for her as one where she can both teach and research. She’s juggling a few research projects that focus on improving patient care and the overall healthcare environment.

Research to improve nursing education

Schievelbein recently published on the “tag team” approach to healthcare simulations. Usually, simulations are completed in small groups of four to eight students at a time. In Australia, nursing educators do simulations in classrooms of 120.

“We took that and implemented it in our fifth-semester clinical with groups of about 20 students,” she said.

For the past three years, she’s collected data on the benefits to faculty — a decrease in faculty time for setup and takedown of the scenarios — and on student outcomes in larger groups.

“Students realize, ‘OK, I’m not in this alone. This is a team effort.’ And I think that’s really important in nursing because you’re never alone. You always have other nurses. You have a supervisor. You always have somebody you can go to with questions. It’s really fostering that team component of it for those students,” Schievelbein said.

Very little research has been done on tag team simulations. Schievelbein said she found six or seven articles in a scoping review with only one published in the U.S. She’s trying to change that.

“We’re working on these publications because we want to get the word out to people that, hey, this is great for your students,” she said.

Targeting readmission rates

Schievelbein has also been working on studying a method to decrease readmission rates for chronic diseases. Her Ph.D. dissertation was a case study on heart failure patients.

“I implemented a follow-up program where I called patients once a week for four weeks after they got discharged from the hospital, just to see if there was an impact at all on those patients,” she said.

She worked with two patients. One did really well after her discharge.

For the other, he brought up a concern during a phone call two weeks after he left the hospital. Based on her nursing experience, Schievelbein suggested he call his provider.

“Week three, I found out he did that, and he had to adjust some of his medications. He goes, ‘Oh my gosh, I would have never gone in. I would never have contacted my provider if you hadn’t told me that’s what I should do,’” she said.

The patient was scheduled for a follow-up appointment four weeks after his original discharge, two weeks after he brought up his concern to Schievelbein. He told Schievelbein that his provider told him he would have likely been readmitted if he’d waited that long.

“That’s really what I was going for. Let’s catch them before they get to the point where they have to be readmitted. Let’s get them in earlier to hopefully avoid that hospitalization,” she said.

Schievelbein is working on the next steps of all her projects. She’s continuing to gather data on tag team healthcare simulations. And she hopes to expand the case study to reach more patients.

Now, she’ll do it as SDSU’s College of Nursing 2026 Outstanding Researcher.