Office of the Dean
School of Nursing Golden Jubilee: 1974-2024 - Celebrating our Past, Defining our Future
On April 12, 2024, the School of Nursing celebrated our 50th Anniversary! Our video, Celebrating 50 Years of the University of Louisville School of Nursing, will give you a glimpse of our history and current successes. The profession of nursing has changed significantly over the last 50 years, and during the pandemic, was challenged like no other time in my 46-year career. The UofL School of Nursing stood strong as our faculty delivered online education, created a multitude of simulation and alternative clinical activities, and initiated in-house NCLEX review courses to assure students’ readiness for licensure and professional success. In 2021, despite the many alterations and challenges in our educational delivery throughout the pandemic, we received full 10-year accreditation for BSN, MSN, DNP, and Post-graduate certificate programs.
The UofL School of Nursing has a positive and solid trajectory for our future success!
Though challenged by significant competition and an increasing trend toward fast-tracking students through pre-licensure and APRN programs, we are committed to delivering high quality didactic and clinical education, and producing strong, practice-ready, and professionally focused graduates in our Louisville and Owensboro programs. Our faculty will stay the course of baccalaureate education because of the data that demonstrate the benefits of BSN-prepared nurses in reducing complications and improving patient outcomes.
For the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year, we have greatly increased our traditional and accelerated second-degree BSN enrollment to provide more quality graduates for the workforce. Our RN-BSN Concurrent Enrollment Program, launched in 2022, offers a direct path for students across the Kentucky Community and Technical College and Indiana Ivy Tech Community College Systems to begin their BSN concurrently with their ADN education.
At the graduate level, we are launching a new MSN Leadership program in Fall 2024, with tracks in practice and educational leadership. Our focus on high quality preparation of APRNs is evident with our extremely high certification pass rates from all six tracks in the Nurse Practitioner program. Our nurse anesthesia program began in August 2023 with notable dedication to quality in the program development, evidenced receipt of full preliminary accreditation. In Spring 2024 we opened newly remodeled simulation space containing an operating room and nurse practitioner outpatient clinics.
Our PhD Program continues to grow, despite national trends in the opposite direction. With students from around the globe, we have exciting research on diverse populations. Our PhD students are not just disseminating at local, regional, and national conferences, they are bringing home top awards for their presentations.
School of Nursing faculty have research and scholarship related to vulnerable populations and operating room safety. Our teaching faculty are well-known in the across the university for their scholarship in course and curriculum design and delivery. The 2023 receipt of $6.5 million in BSN and APRN HRSA training grants by Drs. Heather Mitchell and Sara Robertson demonstrates the leadership of the UofL School of Nursing in providing undergraduate and graduate nursing education to diverse populations across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The School of Nursing is blessed to have multiple donors at all levels who support simulation and classroom learning spaces, the collaboration center, academic scholarships, research and international service-learning travel, and an emergency fund to help students who face unexpected financial crises. For all of you who donate, we are extremely grateful.
Is it obvious that I can’t say enough good things about the UofL School of Nursing? The faculty, supported by our excellent staff, are already defining our future that is strong, quality-based, value-driven, meets the needs of the nursing workforce, advances the state of nursing science, and will serve generations of students to come. I am confident that School will continue to prosper under the university leadership of President Schatzel and Provost Bradley.
Welcome Dean Nash!
It has been an unbelievable honor it is for me to serve as Interim Dean for the last two years in a school in which I was preceded by strong women who started the School 50 years ago and provided incredible leadership across its history. As I transition to retirement, I am pleased to welcome the 6th Dean of the School of Nursing, Dr. Whitney Nash, on July 1. A two-time Alumna of the School of Nursing (MSN 1997 and PhD 2020), she had clinical practice in the emergency room, cardiology, cardiac rehab, and long-term care, and has been a nurse practitioner in adult and geriatric care for 27 years. Previously a full professor, Associate Dean for Practice and Service and Assistant Vice President of Inter-professional Practice Partnerships for the UofL Health Sciences Campus, Dr. Nash has most recently been a Professor and Dean of the Waters College of Health Professions at Georgia Southern University.
Following receipt of a HRSA grant by Dr. Cynthia McCurren, Dr. Nash founded and served as the first director of the Kentucky Racing Health Services Center, an independent nurse-practitioner clinic for backside workers in the thoroughbred racing industry. She also founded UofL Care Partners, developed and implemented interprofessional education between the Schools of Nursing and Dentistry, and developed the School of Nursing International Service-Learning Program, mentoring UofL students in multiple countries for many years.
Dr. Nash has been recognized for her numerous publications and career accomplishments as an advanced practice nurse. She received the American Academy of Nursing Edge Runner Award in 2017 and is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and the Duke Johnson and Johnson Nurse Leadership Program.
Please help me welcome Dr. Whitney Nash back to the UofL School of Nursing!
Mary DeLetter, PhD, RN
Interim Dean and Professor
UofL School of Nursing
