VUSN joins forces with Fisk
The Tennessee Board of Nursing has approved a plan by Vanderbilt University School of Nursing and Fisk University to expand their current relationship and offer courses to meet requirements of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree to be awarded by Fisk.
Students will complete a specified liberal arts curriculum at Fisk and the VUSN pre-specialty curriculum to earn a B.S.N. degree from Fisk. Fisk will administer the program and VUSN’s Linda Norman, D.S.N., senior associate dean for Academics, will coordinate Vanderbilt’s courses and the Fisk curriculum.
“This relationship provides a nursing program to an institution that has a high percentage of minority students,” said Norman. “It’s also cost effective for Fisk University; it prevents them from having to incur the expense of providing the classrooms and skills labs, or having to employ a department of nursing faculty.”
The existing classroom, laboratory, and clinical facilities for the VUSN pre-specialty nursing curriculum will be used for the additional students admitted under the Fisk/VUSN B.S.N. agreement.
Six part-time clinical faculty positions will be added to accommodate the students. One full-time faculty will be hired by Fisk University to provide advisement services at Fisk and teach the three nursing courses that will be offered by Fisk.
Norman will serve jointly as Director of Nursing at Fisk University during the first five years of the program.
Colleen Conway-Welch, Ph.D., dean of VUSN, says the partnership is groundbreaking in nursing academics. “To the best of my knowledge this is a first. No other school of nursing has worked out these arrangements. I credit Dr. Norman with doing the hard work to make this feasible, and appreciate the support we’ve received from Marilyn Dubree (Chief Nursing Officer and Director of Patient Care Services), Dr. Harry R. Jacobson (vice chancellor for Health Affairs), and Chancellor Gordon Gee,” she said.