Gonzaga creates new nursing school
Plans include adding graduate-level programs
Gonzaga University will combine two departments and expand them into a new School of Nursing and Human Physiology, hoping to meet the demand for medical professionals that will be driven by federal health care reform.
The university said Monday it will combine its nursing department, which offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, and the human physiology department, which offers a bachelor of science degree, to create GU’s first new school in nearly 40 years.
That means Spokane has two schools of nursing within a few blocks of each other, because the Washington State University College of Nursing is located at the nearby Riverpoint campus.
Neither Brenda Stevenson Marshall, the inaugural dean at Gonzaga’s new school, nor Lisa Brown, chancellor at WSU-Spokane where the nursing college and the new medical school are located, see that as competition.
“What I see is the opportunity for us to collaborate,” said Marshall, who previously helped establish the School of Health Sciences at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. “The Affordable Care Act has led to a new demand for nurse practitioners.”
Brown said Gonzaga’s restructuring will give potential students more opportunities to get an education in nursing: “We certainly can’t do it all. We already turn away students.”
Gonzaga’s nursing and human physiology programs currently have about 1,200 students in all levels of study. The university wants to add some graduate-level programs, including a doctorate in nurse anesthesia practice in 2015, if it can receive accreditation. Its programs will continue to emphasize Jesuit principles of social justice and caring for underserved populations, Marshall said.
They’ll continue partnerships with Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and other community services, she said.
The WSU College of Nursing has about 750 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, and offers a doctorate in nursing practice, with classes at Riverpoint and four remote locations across the state.
It was once known as the Intercollegiate Center for Nursing Education, which began in 1968 as a consortium involving WSU, Eastern Washington University, Whitworth University and the now-closed Fort Wright College. Eastern and Whitworth are still part of the consortium, which is administered by WSU. At one point, some Gonzaga students did attend ICNE’s successor, the Intercollegiate College of Nursing.