Nursing School Wins Grant for Minority Students

For the fifth time in seven years, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted to public health, has awarded the School of Nursing a grant to help students from underrepresented groups and disadvantaged backgrounds enter the field of nursing.

The $50,000 grant is administered through the foundation’s New Careers in Nursing program (NCIN), an initiative established to address the national nursing shortage by diversifying the nursing profession. The nursing school received the block grant for the 2014–2015 academic year. It will be awarded equally to five incoming students in the accelerated Second Degree BSN program, a one-year course of study for students who have already earned a baccalaureate degree but wish to earn a bachelor’s in nursing.

Only nursing schools that offer accelerated nursing degree programs are eligible for the funding, and schools that earn NCIN grants also provide additional mentoring and leadership development to the students receiving the scholarships.

According to Dr. Joan Such Lockhart, clinical professor of nursing and associate dean for academic affairs, this is the final year that NCIN funding will be available. Since 2008, the first year that NCIN funds were available, the foundation has provided $400,000 to the School of Nursing. That funding has helped pay tuition for 40 eligible Second Degree BSN students at Duquesne.

Lockhart collaborated with faculty colleagues Leah Cunningham, clinical assistant professor and assistant dean, and Dr. Yvonne Weideman, assistant professor, to author the grant proposal.

Cunningham and Lockhart have worked together on each of the successful grant proposals. “Leah and I have been quite fortunate to have received funding for five of the seven rounds since the program began in 2008,” she said.