SON: Connections - Spring 2005

Headlines | Briefly | From the Deans Desk
UWMC Professorship Established; Swanson Named Recipient

Kristen Swanson

The UW School of Nursing is receiving funding from UW Medical Center (UWMC) for a new endowed professorship. The $250,000 gift, to be made over a five-year period, will establish the University of Washington Medical Center Endowed Professorship in Nursing Leadership.

"The UWMC's support of a professorship reflects our growing partnership and the medical center's understanding of the critical need to support nurse leaders during our national nursing shortage," said Dean Nancy Woods.

To allow the school to begin supporting a faculty member immediately, UWMC provided upfront funding for a five-year term professorship, which will convert to the endowed professorship following the term. In May, Woods announced the appointment of Kristen Swanson, professor and department chair in family and child nursing, to the term professorship. Swanson is currently partnering with UWMC on developing improved models of nursing care. In other work, she studies ways to help couples heal after miscarriage.

The UWMC Term Professorship in Nursing Leadership, as it is currently known, enhances the base salary of a top full-time faculty member, making salaries more competitive with those at peer institutions. This professorship supports work in educating future nurse leaders, both in academic and clinical settings. It will also help the school and UWMC create conditions that help nurses practice in keeping with their core values of caring, healing and wholeness.

"Our goal was to strengthen our partnership so we could strengthen nursing and the patient care we deliver," said Susan Grant, chief nursing officer at UWMC and an assistant dean at the UW School of Nursing.

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