Mary Frances Pate

Mary Frances Pate, RN, PhD, CNS, completed a two-year term as chair on the AACN Certification Corporation board of directors on June 30, 2016. She now serves as immediate past chair. A board member from July 2009 through June 2013, she was secretary/treasurer in 2011-2012 and chair-elect in 2013-2014.

Pate is an assistant professor at East Carolina University College of Nursing, Greenville, North Carolina. She was previously an associate professor at University of Portland School of Nursing in Oregon from 2012-2014 and an associate professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing from 2009-2011. Before the UAB position, she was an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing in Portland.

Before holding teaching positions at the graduate level, she was a clinical nurse specialist in the pediatric ICU at Oregon Health & Science University from 2000-2005 and at Children's Hospital of Alabama, Birmingham, from 1993-2000. She began her nursing career as an RN in the Birmingham area.

A member of numerous AACN volunteer committees, she sat on the Healthy Work Environment Work Group in 2006-2007, NTI Program Planning Committee in 2003-2004, chairing that same group in 2007-2008, and the Board Advisory Team from 2001-2003. She has been an active member of AACN's Greater Portland and Greater Birmingham chapters.

She served on the editorial board of AACN Advanced Critical Care from 2004-2014 and was pediatric department editor from 2007-2014. She was also a contributing editor of the pediatric column in Critical Care Nurse from 2009-2012.

Her published work comprises many nursing articles, including pediatric intensive care. Most recently, she authored "Nursing Leadership: From the Bedside to the Boardroom" and co-authored "Providing Adult and Pediatric Care in the Same Unit: Multiple Considerations" for AACN Advanced Critical Care.

A frequent presenter on nursing topics, Pate spoke on the value of certification at the nurse residency graduation at Legacy Health System in Portland. She also presented "Where Worlds Collide: Children in the Adult Intensive Care Unit" at the Annual Critical Care Symposium sponsored by AACN's Greater Portland Chapter and "It Takes a Village: The CNS Student, Faculty and Preceptor Partnership" at the 2nd Annual Society of Clinical Nurse Specialist Educators Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, both in 2012.

A member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, she has earned several prestigious awards, including the Nurse Luminary Recognition Award from the American Nurses Association.

Pate has a Doctor of Philosophy from UAB's School of Nursing, where she also earned Bachelor and Master of Science in Nursing degrees.