Dean Marcia Hern

We're celebrating the 35th anniversary of our School of Nursing that began in 1974. Back in 1974, the majority of nurses would have been working in a hospital, but as the demand on nurses has increased dramatically over these 35 years, what you're seeing is a need for nurses to be so job- ready, to take care of these acutely ill patients in the hospital. And in addition to what you're seeing is a movement, also, away from the hospital, in roles such as the primary care nurse practitioner. And then thirdly, you're also seeing a huge need for increasingly more faculty, given the faculty's shortage and the need to conduct research. So over those 35 years, you've moved from primarily a hospital- based nurse to someone with more independence, greater decision- making responsibilities, increasingly more autonomy, but at the risk of also competing with very scarce resources in terms of limited faculty.

What I learned over the course of my administrative career is we must embrace the use of technology, and so we had the vision to design a 159- seat auditorium, with the most state- of- the- art technology on this whole university, I am told. Our renovation has allowed us to transform not only the curriculum, but to transform the building, and we will continue to imagine new ways of delivering the nursing education to the state of Kentucky.