Penn Nursing dean discusses 'state of the school'

Nursing Dean Afaf Meleis had one goal for her colleagues on Thursday afternoon: “to have fun.”

So began Meleis in her State of the School Address, delivered in Fagin Hall. Faculty members and administrators, including Penn Nursing’s Board of Overseers, filled around half of the Ann L. Roy Auditorium. They, along with a handful of nursing students, were eager for the annual report on the School of Nursing’s upcoming year and an update on its past performance.

Highlights from the presentation included details on the School of Nursing’s competitive admissions process. Its undergraduate admission rate for the 2011 academic year was 22 percent, with a yield of 76 percent.

Meleis also discussed a lack of diversity within the school. In the School of Nursing’s Class of 2015, 94.6 percent of the class is female, a greater gender disparity than the 84.6-percent female Class of 2014.

Meleis’ reiteration of Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Vincent Price’s Faculty Diversity Action Plan — which allocated $100 million for faculty recruitment and retention for Penn’s 12 schools over the next five years — was met with applause. She added that she hopes the plan creates “a more inclusive, inviting environment.”

Much of the Dean’s speech focused on the endeavors of the school’s faculty members, such as Nursing professor Julie Fairman, who was recently inducted into the nursing honor society Sigma Theta Tau International Hall of Fame. To honor more professors, the school will establish in 2012 the Norma M. Lang Distinguished Lecture Award for Scholarly Practice.

Yet the School of Nursing does face several challenges in the next year, Meleis said. Finding research funding and financial aid for students, sustaining global outreach, increasing diversity and supporting undergraduate program endowments are all major concerns.

“It’s worrisome,” Meleis said, especially considering that funding from the National Institutes of Health has decreased. To help secure more research funding, the school hopes to consider taking on a select few “riskier” projects — which tend to garner more attention — and model their grant applications after NIH’s priorities.

Of utmost importance to Meleis is the $2.8 million needed for phase 5 renovations of the Fagin Building, which would remodel classrooms and simulation labs on the first floor.

Overall, there was a positive takeaway for nursing school students. The School’s growing pains “show that Penn is a really competitive place,” said Beth Froh, a third-year nursing graduate student. “It speaks to the high caliber of our school.”

An earlier version of this article included a figure about a rise in enrollment in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program. Penn’s Nursing School does not have the program, and the figure has been omitted.

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