August 20, 2004

Nursing School awarded grant to enhance academic partnerships

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Shelley Moore, M.S.N., R.N.

Nursing School awarded grant to enhance academic partnerships

The School of Nursing has been awarded a grant from the Promise of Nursing for Tennessee.

The grant was given to support a campaign that will enhance established partnerships between Vanderbilt and Fisk and Lipscomb Universities.

The Promise of Nursing campaign is a privately-financed campaign organized by Johnson & Johnson to benefit Tennessee schools of nursing in hopes to slow the nursing shortage in the state. Currently, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) ranks Tennessee 33rd in the statewide number of registered nurses per capita.

Vanderbilt will use the grant money to provide academic enhancement and other strategies to help students enrolled in the partnership nursing programs offered by Fisk and Lipscomb in conjunction with VUSN. Under the agreement, Fisk University and Lipscomb University will provide the first five semesters of a pre-nursing liberal arts program of study and the remaining three semesters of nursing courses will be provided by VUSN.

“This grant will allow us to help students to be successful in this joint program and to retain those students who are interested in their freshman year to be able to progress to the upper division nursing major in their junior year,” said Linda Norman, who has a doctor of science in Nursing degree and is senior associate dean of Academics at VUSN.

The new B.S.N. collaboration with Fisk and Lipscomb Universities is off to a successful start, with 11 students admitted and 26 students accepted to the nursing program at Fisk. The students would begin nursing courses at VUSN in 2007.