SON: About the School

Headlines | Briefly | From the Deans Desk | Report to Contributors
Report to Contributors

Looking Forward to 2002

Dear Friends of the School of Nursing,

First and foremost, I want to tell you how grateful I am for your commitment to our school—a commitment of time, resources and energy! We are the #1 nursing school in the country because of your involvement and help in educating superb women and men who will play an increasingly larger role in a rapidly changing health-care environment.

Being a nationally and internationally recognized nursing school, we have a great opportunity to lead the way with exceptional academic programs and research projects. We look to you for further involvement and renewed commitment, particularly in the area of increasing endowments to secure our future. Why are endowments so important? Endowments are permanent funds that are invested for income and growth. The interest they provide is an ongoing source of revenue in perpetuity. In past years we have built endowed fellowships to support students—our first priority. For the future, we will balance our support for students by ensuring that we are able to recruit and retain outstanding faculty to teach them. We hope to do this by creating the first endowed chair in the School of Nursing, and by increasing the number of endowed professorships. With this stable base of endowed support, the School of Nursing can perpetuate its cycle of success—delivering high-quality nursing education to highly qualified students and generating new knowledge to improve nursing practice. It is this mission which has always maintained our outstanding reputation as the top-ranked school of nursing in the United States, a mission made possible by the generosity of our donors.

Listed at the right is endowment information for the UW School of Nursing compared to other top nursing schools in the country. As of September, the School's endowment funds hold an asset value of about $10.5 million. This compares to approximately $12.5 million in endowments at the University of North Carolina, $18 million at the University of California San Francisco, and $38 million at Johns Hopkins University. As you can see, we have exciting challenges before us—to create our first endowed chair, to increase our endowed professorships, and to continue to grow endowed student fellowships. With your strong support, I am confident that we will successfully meet these challenges.

I look forward to meeting you at School functions and community gatherings to thank you personally and to continue our conversation about our future. Thank you for all you do for the School, students, faculty, staff, and our community.

Sincerely,

Nancy Fugate Woods, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N.
Dean and Professor

Headlines | Briefly | From the Deans Desk | Report to Contributors