Mission & History

Roadmap to the Future

2020 – 2025 Strategic Plan

Academics

Overarching Goal: Cultivate competent and compassionate nurse leaders to meet the needs of diverse populations in a dynamic, global society.

Continue to transform nursing education

• Assess all programs systematically using national and specialty standards for quality, significance, and sustainability.
• Reinforce student-centered learning across programs and accessible teaching methods.
• Recruit and cultivate excellent students who are representative of the diverse groups.

Use innovative strategies to increase access to pre-licensure and advanced nursing education

• Achieve faculty excellence in pedagogy and curriculum design.
• Impact nursing education through active policy involvement and dissemination of MUSC program outcomes.
• Assess nursing education program growth and new program development opportunities.
• Increase scholarships and external funding to support students and program development.

Develop nurse leaders who excel in an interprofessional environment utilizing an evidence-based approach

• Provide interprofessional learning activities through coursework and clinical experiences.
• Educate and mentor students who are prepared to serve on boards,

Practice

Overarching Goal: Develop sustainable practice models that support faculty and student professional development.

Create sustainable practice models by identifying partners

• Establish practice partnerships with other South Carolina colleges of nursing (Clemson, USC) for state practice/policy direction.
• Meet with potential internal and external partners to explore new and expand existing partnership opportunities.
• Conduct a comprehensive financial analysis.
• Formalize contractual agreement with partners.

Create sustainable practice models by recruiting practice faculty with support of grant funding

• Determine employment positions for individuals functioning within the practice models.
• Recruit and hire appropriate positions as needed.
• Initiate a formal onboarding process by establishing the policies and procedures to include credentialing and malpractice requirements.

Research

Overarching Goal: Generate and advance scientific knowledge in nursing and health sciences.

Continue to grow diverse research portfolio and funding sources to position the college as a leader in knowledge generation and its translation

• Build a research infrastructure that promotes discoveries, innovation, and leverages existing university resources.
• Hire key positions to engage in grantsmanship for all research faculty as budget variability allows.
• Align research faculty mentors with existing mentorship model to advance development and scholarship for junior and mid-career researchers; formalize model with mentor champion.
• Strengthen partnerships and cross-fertilize programs, MUSC-H, and outside entities for collaborative funding and leverage resources. Meet with key stakeholders and MUSC-H and beyond to establish a strategic approach.
• Invest in internal funding (pilot projects) opportunities and develop efficient processes for progressing new and high-risk, high-reward projects, as budget allows.
• Develop a workforce of nursing and health sciences researchers by recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty to optimize research capacity.
• Increase extramural funding, in particular National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding 30% in three years.
• Maintain top 30 ranking in NIH funding

Promote focused areas of research and scholarship excellence for growth and investment

• Identify research clusters, expertise, and subsequent teams in areas of excellence: symptom science/self-management, health services research, behavioral health, technology-enhanced interventions, community and patient engagement, palliative care, and implementation science.
• Identify innovations and entrepreneurial opportunities and promote its advancement toward

Organizational Environment and Culture

Overarching Goal: Ensure a culture and environment within the college that actualizes the values of the organization integrity, innovation, impact and inclusivity.

Align existing and grow additional organizational resources

• Pursue new, diversified revenue streams to support and advance teaching, research, scholarship, practice, and service missions.
• Conduct annual evaluations of revenue generation and expenses of all programs.
• Grow awareness and cultivation of the Faculty Excellence Project; increase funding by 10-15% each year to support faculty and staff recruitment, development, and retention.
• Develop and cultivate funds to support a Faculty Talent Retention endowment with a target of $50,000 in year one and at least $5,000 in expendable funds raised annually towards a $100,000 endowment in three years.
• Develop a five-year hiring plan that considers succession planning and cross-training; build and strengthen infrastructure to support programs and departments.
• Partner with MUSC-H to create succession planning to facilitate a faculty educator pipeline.
• Grow the faculty practice plan and revenue generation through strategic faculty hires, including two or three positions as budget allows; submit state and federal grant proposals to support faculty practice needs in Charleston and S.C., solicit of gifts for emerging faculty practices.
• Develop strategies to increase matriculation in programs and classes with low enrollment.
• Work with donors and board volunteers to secure gifts and endowments to support two distinguished faculty positions.
• Begin preliminary planning and solicit donor support for redesign of the building’s first floor.
• Develop an IT equipment and software tracking plan to ensure regular maintenance and replacement of IT resources.
• Ensure the college workforce shares in the maintaining the fiscal viability of the college and our processes.

Embody respect for individual perspectives, inclusivity, and belonging for all

• Build a community of respect, inclusivity, and belonging among faculty, staff, students, alumni, and partner stakeholders.
• Develop traditions to celebrate and acknowledge employee successes; support diversity, inclusivity, and equity programs and opportunities; ensure all communication efforts respect inclusivity; foster an inclusive environment for employees to thrive and work together in a supportive, open, and respectful environment; recruit and retain a diverse workforce.
• Establish a social events committee to increase opportunities for social interaction.
• Highlight accomplishments of faculty and staff in print, electronic communications, and social media.
• Share college priorities and accomplishments with MUSC colleagues, community partners, regional and national groups, and professional stakeholders.
• Highlight student engagement, events, activities, achievements, and leadership in communications; nurture growth of Student Nurses Association and Student Government Association; encourage participation on standing committees and Sigma Theta Tau, Gamma Omicron at-Large Chapter.
• Establish ‘care groups’ for undergraduate students upon admission.
• Develop systematic processes to update web, print and electronic communication materials (including listservs).

Generate development, mentorship, and experiential opportunities for faculty, staff, and students

• Increase support of faculty and staff development and career advancement through annual goal setting and planning;
• Encourage enrollment in targeted programs; support time allocation from approved budget projections.
• Assign mentors to new faculty and staff; evaluate program annually.
• Continue to cultivate donors and seek new funding opportunities; increase funding by 5% each fiscal year to support scholarships for URM students, students from rural areas,
  and Ph.D. and graduate students enrolling in new programs.

Strategic Plan 2020-2025

The Stethoscope and White Coat Ceremony

Transforming Traditions in Nursing

A nursing tradition was reborn at MUSC in 2002. It rekindled the fire that was originally lit by the lamp of Florence Nightingale by transforming the honor of nursing's traditional "Capping Ceremony" into a more contemporary and equally important event, as the baccalaureate students were recognized by the new tradition of a "Stethoscope Ceremony."

Most nursing faculty fondly remember the importance of their own "Capping Ceremony" - a time of recognition and reflection on the paths they were pursing in their chosen career. Yet times and norms have changed, and nurses stopped wearing caps years ago. Sadly, a ceremony celebrating this academic and professional milestone also stopped, as nurses became focused on trying to meet the demands of their stressful work and school environments.

In a renewal of these values and this rite of passage, the MUSC faculty decided to use the power of the stethoscope and words from their colleagues to connote this same tradition of welcoming students into the family of nursing. The campus chapel, with candles flickering and organ music softly playing in the background, captures the air of expectancy among students, families and faculty. In a formal ceremony, the entering baccalaureate students are presented with a stethoscope as a tangible tool of their profession and listen to words of inspiration about the career they have chosen for their life's work. And so a new tradition was born.

In 2014, a gift from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation allowed the College of Nursing to expand this ceremony to include a White Coat Ceremony and the presentation of a Humanism in Medicine Lapel Pin to the incoming Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing students. Students wear their white coats, recite the Nightingale pledge and are presented with a lapel pin that symbolizes the behaviors between nurses and patients that is respectful and compassionate. It signifies attitudes that are sensitive to the values, autonomy, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds of others.

Interested in learning about what happened to the cap? Read this article from Medscape Today: The Dawn of the Cap.

College of Nursing Philosophy

The College of Nursing philosophy is congruent with that of the Medical University of South Carolina and guides the education, research, and practice of nurses and other health professionals in an interprofessional health sciences center. This philosophy embodies the concepts of nursing, health, person, and environment. The faculty believe that the discipline of nursing is both an art and a science focusing on the optimization of health and holistic well being across diverse populations within global communities. Our core values guide the integration of education, scholarship and inquiry to advance knowledge and practice framed by a collaborative interprofessional model of care.