School of Nursing Receives $2.36M UNC System Award to Boost Workforce

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (July 11, 2024) – The School of Nursing at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University has received $2.36 million from the University of North Carolina System as part of its Health Care Workforce Nursing Program Expansion Initiative.

The funding, which will be dispensed over two years, will support students and faculty in the school’s traditional BSN option, as well as the recently approved Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program.

The majority of the funds will be used to create a nurse-led mobile outreach clinic to promote health and wellness in rural communities in North Carolina, giving nursing students the opportunity to log clinical practice hours while serving the Triad area. The award will also be used to provide financial assistance to DNP students to serve as teaching assistants in the mobile clinic.

For the BSN program, the funding will support foundational preparation of pre-licensure nursing students. It will provide tutoring and support to students taking chemistry, a prerequisite course for all nursing programs.

The School of Nursing, which is housed in the John R. and Kathy R. Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences, offers three entry options for earning the BSN: the traditional BSN, accelerated BSN and BSN completion for Registered Nurses. The first two years of the traditional BSN program encompasses core university requirements and foundation courses for the major, while the last two are largely devoted to nursing clinical courses.

“This award from the UNC System is very timely, just ahead of admitting our inaugural cohort of DNP students,” said Tiffany Morris, DNP, MS Ed., MSN, BSN, director of nursing and Clara Adams Ender Endowed Professor for the School of Nursing. “Receiving the funds will eliminate academic and financial barriers for students in all of our nursing programs.”

The DNP program at N.C. A&T was unanimously approved by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors in February and will admit its first cohort of students in fall 2024.

The DNP is a terminal degree that prepares nurses for advanced clinical practice and leadership. A&T’s DNP program has two tracks: a BSN-DNP Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) track and a post-master’s Transformational Nursing Leadership (TNL) track. Coursework will be delivered in a hybrid mode to meet the needs of nursing students working full- or part-time. Both tracks integrate emerging technology as well as health equity and social justice components in the curriculum to ethically and innovatively address health care challenges.

Overall, the DNP will serve to increase minority student representation in advanced nursing practice and leadership, bridge workforce gaps in PMHNPs and equip future nursing leaders with diversity, equity and inclusion and emerging health care technology skills.

“This funding is a great boost to N.C. A&T’s efforts to enhance enrollment in nursing programs and serves to alleviate the shortage in the nursing workforce in the state of North Carolina and nation-wide” said Elimelda M. Ongeri, Ph.D., Hairston College dean. “I’m especially excited about the nurse-led mobile clinic which will expand health-care access to underserved communities in urban and rural settings, a vision that aligns well with N.C. A&T’s strategic goals.”