Welcome to the School of Nursing!

There is so much energy and many more changes going on in the School of Nursing, located on the Health Sciences Center campus. Now in my fifth year as dean, I am proud of all we have achieved and are planning to achieve as a school.

As you now enter our school lobby in the K building on the first floor, you will be welcomed into a renovated three-floor school occupied by very talented and dedicated nursing faculty, staff and students. The second floor predominately includes classrooms and our Red and Black student lounge. Students can take advantage of wireless capability throughout the building.

The third floor is the administrative suite, undergraduate and practice faculty offices and three clinical practice simulation suites with 24 beds that use state-of-the-art technology to capture both video and audio student learning on high fidelity computer simulations and electronic health records. These students are definitely job ready through digital learning.

The fourth floor houses a well staffed Research Office through our graduate research assistants, a doctoral student lounge and offices for graduate faculty; those who work in this area are developing the school’s research engine.  The top floor of the school also includes a 159-seat auditorium created to broadcast the BSN extension program to Owensboro, Kentucky – a program that will enhance workforce development throughout the state. The auditorium also serves as a venue for national and regional nursing leaders’ presentations.

Although the physical changes are essential, it is the academic, research, practice and service outcomes that make the greatest impact. The School of Nursing boasts the following:

-          Highest enrollment since our early beginnings in 1974

-          Highest admission GPA’s to the baccalaureate programs and highest NCLEX-RN licensure pass rates

-          Consistently very high certification examinations for the master’s nurse practitioner students in adult, family, psychiatric mental health and neonatal nursing

-          Innovative plans to develop dual women’s health and family nurse practitioner major, the Doctor of Nursing Practice and an acute care nurse practitioner master’s major.

-          An intellectually robust and diversely rich PhD student cohort – representing over six countries and the United States

-          Extremely active faculty, with students in the community providing over 10,000 service learning and practice hours locally and globally to improve the health of communities.

-          Faculty nurse scientists, who create new knowledge through conducting studies on adolescent risk behaviors, burn prevention, diabetes and motivational interviewing, end-of-life palliative care, hypertension between mother/daughter dyads, patient safety and falls, smoking cessation,  transcendence and adaptation for successful aging in the elderly, to name but a few, and, who translate the evidence into policy and practice through our graduates.

The ultimate goal of the faculty is to prepare graduates to be full partners in the delivery of health care, academic nursing and research discoveries.

The SON continues to transform health care through the creation of new knowledge, provision of care, community and professional service, policy development, and workforce development……Transforming the art of caring through nursing science- not just for today, but tomorrow.

Please explore our website for more information about how we fulfill our mission of teaching, research and service.

-Marcia J. Hern, Dean