SON: About the School

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

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

For more than a decade, the School of Nursing faculty, staff and students have been involved in activities to enhance the diversity of our School and to increase our capacity for being culturally sensitive health care professionals.

When we began this effort, we could not have anticipated the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., nor could we have anticipated the responses to them: fear, anger, sorrow, uncertainty – and unimaginable acts of heroism. Today, we find ourselves at a crucial point in realizing our vision for unity in diversity, recognizing that now, more than ever, we must go beyond rhetoric to action. We must live our vision that every person and idea is worthy of our respect. We must experience what it means to be a responsible citizen of the world, understanding that there are great variations in beliefs among Islamic groups just as there are among Christian or Jewish groups. We must continue to discuss the terrorist actions and their implications for how we deliver health care.

Given our role as a top-ranked school of nursing in a world-class research university, we have special responsibilities as educators and researchers. One of the goals of our strategic plan for the first five years of the 21st century is to "recruit and retain a diverse student body, faculty and staff." To this end, we are polling our faculty about school-wide needs to support teaching across diverse groups of students and to enhance our students' cultural sensitivity. We are working with cross-campus groups and organizations that share this commitment. We are identifying skills that support our faculty in their research with diverse populations. This fall, we began our academic year with a faculty-staff retreat where one of our alumni, Margarita Suarez, '75 MN, led us in a provocative discussion about how we can live the vision we have created by becoming more sensitive to our internalized systems for thinking about ourselves and others.

Months before the terrorist attacks, the School was invited to be part of a coalition of schools of nursing across the country addressing the health challenges of terrorism, including biological and chemical warfare. As we direct heightened energy to this challenge, I also encourage our School of Nursing faculty, staff, students and alumni to focus on how we can all work to build a better world, starting right here at home with the issue of health disparities in our communities.

As we face 2002 with a unique mixture of sadness and hope, I challenge each of us to focus on how we can use our many special talents and energies constructively, listening to all voices, and embracing the diversity among us and around us at every opportunity. In this season of giving, there can be no better gift, nor any better way to express our common humanity.

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