“Finding Community”: Celebrating a Doctor of Education Milestone
Honoring Beth West, EdD for her successful dissertation defense examining clinician educators’ lived experiences within a community of practice
This past August, Beth West, EdD, earned her Doctor of Education (EdD) in Educational Leadership from the University of Bridgeport, marking a tremendous milestone in her academic and professional journey.
She also successfully defended her dissertation, Finding Community: A Transpersonal Phenomenological Inquiry of the Lived Experiences of Clinician Educators in a Community of Practice. Her work represents a significant scholarly contribution to understanding how clinician educators experience connection, identity, and growth through shared professional communities.
Beth offered this insight from her dissertation defense:
“I wrapped up my doctoral journey and successfully defended my dissertation, a qualitative, phenomenological study exploring lived experiences of clinician educator members of the Patricia A. Tietjen, MD Teaching Academy at Nuvance/ Northwell Health.
None of this would have been possible without the trust and faith of these incredibly passionate clinician educator members who jumped into the deep end with me and let me poke, prod, and explore (through novel techniques like rich pictures as a data elicitation method… cue the Crayola markers!) their experiences with professional burnout, professional identity formation, and self-efficacy… the bottom line is that Communities of Practice are deeply meaningful spaces where social learning theories come to life and the benefits are hard to get my arms around.
Evidence-Based Gains in Clinical Practice
17 interviews and rich pictures, 168,000 words / 700+pages / and 21+ hours of transcripts analyzed, 3,218 code incidents from line-by-line hand coding, 650+ unique codes all boiled down to 313 pages – 4 contextual anchors, 3 key themes, and 2 major takeaways of organizational impact.”
Beth’s accomplishment reflects both scholarly rigor and deep appreciation for the Teaching Academy community—an embodiment of the very themes her study explores.
Her research illuminates how Communities of Practice serve as powerful, supportive environments where clinician educators can process their experiences, develop their professional identities, and strengthen their sense of purpose. The work underscores the critical role that shared learning spaces play in combating burnout, enhancing self‑efficacy, and building collaborative, resilient educational cultures.
