#MeetUsMonday - Meet Professor Crystal Toll
Meet Crystal.
First-degree Shodon black belt. Indiana and Florida native. Fan of Floydfest, playing games, hiking in the woods, her dogs Whisper, Arden, and Zig, and vegetable and flower gardening. Lives on 35 acres of land with a host of trails and loves college football, a good glass of wine, and sitting on her porch watching the birds, including those fighting over her 15 hummingbird feeders. A former travel nurse with more than 20 years of care and management experience who came to Charlottesville in 2006, loved it, and stayed.
From a family of educators who came to teaching after working as a critical care nurse, a nurse manager, and in administrative roles in quality analysis and professional development. An assistant professor who teaches the Richmond RN to BSN students whose pollinator garden is her balm and delight.
“Unconditional. The School’s unconditional positive regard plays a role in nurturing growth with grace and acceptance, even in the face of the mistakes and failures we all make.”
Crystal Toll, assistant professor and Richmond RN to BSN faculty member
HER PATH TO NURSING
“My grandfather was a Notre Dame English professor, and a medievalist, and my mom and grandmother are science and art teachers. Our family joke was always that I became a nurse because I didn’t want to be a teacher! Coming from an eccentric group of folks, I really found nursing because I was curious about the human experience, when people are healthy, or ill, or healing, and how they navigate and respond. I love discovery and was a total science nerd in high school. When it came time to decide what I was going to do, I saw that nursing really offered that space, a focus on science, which is my favorite, and compassion, which is my favorite thing to do, all focused into one space.
“The unconditional positive regard I had in my family created in me a hope that I could meet others with unconditional positive regard to offer person-centered care. It all really began in high school, when I was a total science geek taking all these honors-level science classes. I’d originally thought about medicine, and that’s the track I was on when I began studying at Notre Dame, but I quickly realized that medicine wasn’t what I wanted. Nursing offered me that complexity of health but gave me a different way to foster connection with people. And when I decided finally to become a nursing professor, I just quit fighting it and did it. I couldn’t resist teaching anymore!”
BEST PART OF HER JOB
“Facilitating connection in learning with and from our students and belonging to a community of motivated minds. [UVA School of Nursing has] creative, diverse talent and a flexible approach to learning that is not cookie-cutter. Every member of our student community is recognized for their unique contribution to nursing and is supported to realize their potential, and to own their experience.”
“The absolute best part of my job teaching in the RN to BSN program is that I have the opportunity to learn from everyone. The nursing students in this program come from diverse backgrounds, have different experiences as professionals, and insights that teach us all. It’s such a cool space where our dialogues really enrich how we’re learning, and even when we’re on an online discussion board, or if we’re reflecting, it’s such a neat community that really fosters growth in everyone. It’s also not just professor-to-student learning, but student-to-student learning, and student-to-faculty member learning. Every week I come away from class with valuable insights because I have an opportunity to learn from students and facilitate their learning. It’s a continuous learning experience! I look forward to our classes, and find, when we break for summer, that I really, really miss my students.”
LAST BOOK SHE READ FOR FUN
“This is a little weird, but for fun, over the summer, I read a book my grandfather wrote back in 1968 called Interpretations of Piers Plowman. It stemmed from his dissertation, and was from early in his time as an English professor. When my grandparents died, I got some of their things: my grandmother’s artwork and pottery, but his desk, too, that I used to sit on as a child and bother him as he worked, and many of his scholarly works. Reading the book was hard—it’s dense, and kind of a complex search for truth and moral clarity, calling out hypocrisies in church and society and government—but, because my grandparents raised me, it was a really nice way to reconnect with them after they were gone. Reading it, I could hear and see my grandpa in it. Endearing!”
WHAT SHE DOES TO RECHARGE
“I like to dig in the dirt, work in my vegetable and pollinator garden. My sweetheart blazed some nice trails on my property, so I also love getting away from the computer and getting outside really grounds me, too. I’m a big football fan, especially college football, and love a good glass of wine, too.”
[VIDEO] "Buddy Up" - A look inside the peer mentoring program prof. Crystal Toll developed
WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE RN TO BSN PROGRAM
“My elevator pitch is always this: the program’s really meaningful, and transformational, and offers much more than jus ta degree. The program has the opportunity to be transformative for these nurses, the way it honors the expertise they already bring but expands their capacity to think more broadly about leadership and evidence-based practice and holistic care. Nurses in the program have clinical reasoning, but they get to refine their professional voices and think about interdisciplinary perspective and what the impact is. It’s really powerful.
“Our mentoring program that pairs first- and second-year nursing students in the RN to BSN program continues to go strong, with the first part of the learning focused on the mentee, and what they need, and, 4th year, on the mentor, who’s taking leadership classes. It’s all really grounded in the AACN Essentials, too, which is nice because it really puts some curricular teeth in it.
“The other thing is that we’re really flexible and, honestly, so gosh darn inclusive that we want students to grow in their learning. It’s just so much fun!”
THE SCHOOL IN A SINGLE WORD?
“UNCONDITIONAL. The School’s unconditional positive regard plays a role in nurturing growth with grace and acceptance, even in the face of the mistakes and failures we all make. It holds the heartbeat of where we are in nursing education: the students are evolving, our curriculum is evolving, but we’re still really grounded in the culture of care. It’s sticky. It’s unconditional!”
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