Grant to help MSSU nursing program gear up to meet demand

Jan. 11—The nursing program at Missouri Southern State University will use a $347,252 grant to help fund an expansion. The program currently includes a fall cohort of up to 30 students. The university will add a second pre-licensure bachelor of science in nursing spring cohort for to 20 students.

The grant was from Missouri’s Nursing Education Incentive Program.

Lisa Beals, chair of the nursing department at MSSU, made the announcement to the board of governors on Friday during their meeting.

She said this expansion will help address the critical shortage of registered nurses and nursing faculty in the Four-State Area.

Beals said the funding will also support the development of a master of science program with a nurse education emphasis, further enhancing the university’s ability to address workforce shortages.

“We’ll have up to 30 students in the fall and 20 students in the spring, so when fully implemented we will have four cohorts and about 100 students each year,” she said. “The receipt of that grant also allows us to support that expansion and helps support our faculty through professional development and then to support the future with a graduate program.”

The grant will also help fund the establishment of a nurse educator mentoring network, or NEMN, where MSSU nursing faculty will provide mentoring for regional faculty from other institutions.

Beals said the faculty in the nursing program have been working toward this expansion since most of them came to the university in 2020.

“I was appointed in July 2020 and hit the ground running in August 2020,” Beals said.

She noted that the McCune-Brooks Department of Nursing had been hit by the Missouri State Board of Nursing with a moratorium on new admissions to the program and given conditional approval.

“We were deficient in several areas according to the state board of nursing. The end result was hiring a new department chair and seven new faculty. We had a moratorium on new admissions and conditional approval of our program. Our response was not one of defeat. We took the bull by the horns and looked at our mission, vision, values and we created a new curriculum in about four months and got it approved. We worked through all the approval bodies and started out really mentoring those new faculty on being the excellent educators that they are today.”

Southern is one of 13 nursing education programs across the state will share a total of about $5 million in grants that were part of a special appropriation to the Missouri State Board of Nursing.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said in a statement last month: “These investments today are a continuation of our commitment to the future of Missouri, ensuring that future generations get the hands-on training necessary to fulfill their American Dream, while addressing the nationwide nursing shortage.”

Other grants to colleges and universities:

—$343,000 to Bolivar Technical College.

—$115,533 to Mineral Area Community College.

—$719,135 to Missouri Baptist University.

—$359,000 to Missouri State University-West Plains.

—$286,438 to Missouri Valley College.

—$630,000 to Rockhurst University-Kansas City.

—$150,000 to State Fair Community College.

—$621,975 to Stephens College.

—$424,500 to St. Charles Community College.

—$334,117 to Saint Louis University.

—$150,000 to University of Missouri-Kansas City.

—$519,050 to University of Missouri-St. Louis.

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