Paying it Forward” - School of Nursing - West Virginia University

program branches out to the PICU and NICU. The
WiseWoman CDC/ WVDPH grant (with Loretta
Reckart, Robin Seabury and Barbara Miller) has also
been refunded. Cyndi Persily has received continued
funding for the WV Nursing Leadership Institute
team development program from the RWJ Partners in
Nursing's Future initiative in partnership with the
Benedum foundation, as well as continuation funding
as Deputy Director of the WV Rural Health Research
Center - one of only four in the country to be funded.
Joy Buck was informed that her NIH NINR R15
grant has been funded : Building Capacity for Rural
Integrated Palliative Care, and we were informed in
June 2010 that the Telemonitoring study to build selfmanagement
skills for patients with lung cancer was
funded by the NIH National Cancer Institute with
Kathy Chen and myself as Co-PIs. Laurie Theeke
became our first RWJ nurse faculty scholar with
research funding to study loneliness in elders. A grant
to provide traineeships has again been awarded to
Mary Jane Smith, and the RWJ Foundation has made
an unprecedented 3rd award for the New Careers in
Nursing program to Betty Shelton for a total of
$150,000. We continue to identify students eligible for
the National Faculty Loan Program to give $30,000
to graduate students. Our largest grant ever was
awarded by the Helene Fuld Health Trust to support
disadvantaged undergraduate students - $600,000
over 3 years divided between cash and endowments -
and both the Valley Health System (VA) and West
Virginia University Hospitals have set up
endowments to support our faculty and students. We
hope you will agree that we are using well the
resources you are sharing with us.
Today's nurses face demands for information and
innovation that we could not have imagined 50 years
ago, nor could Dean Majors and those first classes
have imagined the scope and complexity of issues that
would mark society today. Nevertheless the "West
Virginia Plan" prepared nurses for the future - for
TODAY! The challenge of meeting health care needs
in the next century mandates that we continue to
support access to the intellectual resources found on
university campuses like ours, to prepare welleducated
nurses and enlightened leaders -- leaders like
Diana Mason, the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate
from WVU this year (along with Dr. Peter Macgrath
and former President Bill Clinton!). Student success is
and will remain WVU SON's top priority. But our
abiding commitment to teaching does not preclude our
strong commitment to practice and to incubating
ideas and encouraging innovation - to conducting
research that holds great promise for spawning new
ways of CARING that can lead to improved life
quality. The results speak for themselves. My watch
comprises part of the first decade of the new centurymy
focus as Dean is to increase access and equal
opportunity, teaching excellence, professional
development, scholarship, a commitment to student
success and meaningful community engagement -- the
kind that reflects and helps students connect their
textbook learning to the real world of patients. Let us
hear from you - your ideas stimulate us to new
horizons - we still need your wisdom… Lets Go
MOUNTAINEERS!
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