Fisk, Vanderbilt collaborate on nursing program - noteworthy news - plan to increase minorities in graduate program

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 17, 2003

NASHVILLE, TENN.

Fisk University will start an undergraduate nursing program as part of a new alliance with Vanderbilt University, which is looking to boost the ranks of minority graduate students.

The alliance allows Fisk, a historically Black liberal arts college, to use the teaching facilities of Vanderbilt's established nursing school.

Vanderbilt School of Nursing Dean Colleen Conway-Welch said she hopes her university, which offers only master's and doctoral nursing degrees, can forge the same partnership with other liberal arts colleges.

"The neat thing about it is we're the first in the country to do this--to look at our upper-division courses in a way that they can be packaged and offered to a liberal arts school so (it) can actually have a nursing program without the expense and hassle of recruiting faculty," Conway-Welch told The Tennessean newspaper.

In return, Vanderbilt hopes to attract nursing students for its graduate programs from Fisk.

A Fisk statement said the Tennessee Board of Nursing has approved a fall 2003 enrollment of students for the Fisk-Vanderbilt Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing.

"Our graduates will help to address the health care needs of Nashville, Tennessee and the nation," said Fisk University president Dr. Carolynn Reid-Wallace.

Elizabeth Lund, executive director of the state board of nursing, said the panel approved the partnership to demonstrate support for a program with "great potential" to increase the number of registered nurses in the community.

"An ability to draw a greater number of African American students into a bachelor of science nursing program is exactly what's needed in Tennessee and all over the United States at this time," Lund says.

Fisk's nursing students will live at Fisk and get their undergraduate degrees there. The two-campus program will give students bachelor's degree training as well as "the required foundation to pursue master's and doctoral studies in nursing," the statement said.

Conway-Welch said there will likely be about 30 students in the new nursing program at Fisk.