Dean's Page
November 2011
A Groundbreaking Year
One of my colleagues said that this will be a "groundbreaking year for the School of Nursing!" Literally, yes…as the design for the school's future home is in its final stages. Next spring, we will break ground and construction will begin; if all goes as planned, we will move in the summer of 2014.
The new building, of course, is the central piece of the school's $20 million Capital Campaign, but it's not the only piece. The $20 million figure represents $17 million in private donations to fund a third of the cost of the building and an additional $3 million to "support people and programs," meaning funding to hire more faculty and staff, to provide more student financial aid and more professorships, and to support outreach.
Successful completion of our campaign is critical to the future of the school. It will allow us to attract even more amazing students who want to study here and to provide adequate financial aid if they need it. We want to increase the number of substantial awards to students so that they can focus exclusively on their studies instead of worrying about part-time jobs to make ends meet.
And we must make sure that salaries for faculty and staff are keeping pace so that we can bring the best researchers and clinical faculty here to Wisconsin. To bring the best here sometimes boils down to adequate financial resources; unfortunately, after years of challenging state budgets, School of Nursing salaries are lagging behind where they should be.
I am also working hard to build up the Dean's Fund for Excellence so that when a faculty member or student comes up with a terrific research idea—one that could benefit the people of Wisconsin—I’ll be able to say that this is a tremendous idea and that there is seed money to get started. A fund to help ensure that our faculty, staff, and students can reach out to our partners in health care and in communities across the state to tackle significant issues in health and health care…how exciting is that!
But it's a groundbreaking year in lots of other ways. We will launch our Madison Initiative for Undergraduates project this year, adding six new clinical and research faculty and allowing for a modest increase in our undergraduate program over the next two years. Faculty have won several exciting federal funding awards for projects that you will hear about over the next year.
As we move into the next phase of the school's future, Nursing Dimensions, the school's publication of record, is also changing. This issue will be the last printed version. Starting in 2012, it will be published four times a year, solely in electronic form. This will allow a more comprehensive and timely publication that will incorporate nursing alumni news as well as news about how private philanthropy is making a difference at the School of Nursing. Publishing online will allow us greater immediacy and flexibility in communicating stories about the school and its community of students, staff, faculty, friends, and alumni.
And, in trying to keep up with the times (although, it’s really trying to catch up with…), I intend to make my debut as a blogger this year—a groundbreaking year, indeed! Stay tuned…
Katharyn A. May, DNSc, RN, FAAN
Dean and Professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Nursing