Dean and Professor
Montana State University-Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing
Dr. Sarah Shannon was raised outside Missoula, Montana and studied at University of Montana before transferring to the University of Arizona where she obtained her bachelor’s in nursing. After practicing medical-surgical nursing in Juneau, Alaska and ICU nursing in Seattle, Washington, she earned her PhD in nursing science at the University of Washington. She was faculty in the department of Biobehavioral Nursing & Health Systems in the School of Nursing, and Adjunct faculty in the Department of Bioethics in the School of Medicine at the University of Washington from 1992 to 2016 before becoming Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. Unexpectedly – but with great delight – in 2017, Dr. Shannon had the opportunity to return to her home state of Montana to become the 8th dean of the MSU College of Nursing.
Dr. Shannon’s research focused on improving communication among and between healthcare teams and patients and families around ethically-challenging topics including end-of-life decision-making in the intensive care setting, disclosure of healthcare errors, and conflict within the healthcare team. She had the pleasure of teaching healthcare and professional ethics to BSN nursing students for over twenty years at UW, and was honored five times for her teaching excellence. She was an ethics consultant for University of Washington Medical Center for many years and was Chief of the ethics consultant service for Northwest Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Shannon has a 29-year-old daughter who lives in Seattle.