HRSA
grant to boost nursing education
Cal
State L.A. receives a total of $2.4 million
Los Angeles, CA –
The School of Nursing at
California State University, Los Angeles has recently been
awarded a four-year, $2.4 million Human Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA) grant to alleviate the critical shortage of
nurses in the surrounding communities and to support nursing students in
completing their academic degrees.
“This award will help remove
financial barriers to obtaining a bachelor’s or master’s nursing
education,” said CSULA’s Assistant Professor of Nursing Nnenna Weathers
(Long Beach resident), the grant’s principal investigator, “and it will
help improve academic performance of disadvantaged and underrepresented
minority nursing students.”
CSULA’s School of Nursing aims
to diversify the workforce and improve retention and graduation rates of
disadvantaged and underrepresented students, while continuing to prepare
advanced practice nurses thus increasing the number of primary care
health professionals that provide care to diverse communities.
“We continue to increase the
knowledge of minority health care issues in our nursing programs and to
encourage students to work in primary care sites and in
medically-underserved areas,” explained Dr. Weathers.
Each year, the grant will
provide scholarships for 15 undergraduate students pursuing a bachelor’s
degree in nursing; five registered nurses enrolled in the bachelor’s
degree in nursing program; and 20 graduate and entry-level master’s
students. The money will be applied to the cost of tuition, books,
living expenses, and other reasonable educational expenses.
Full-time graduate and
undergraduate students enrolled in the CSULA’s School of Nursing, in
good academic standing, and demonstrating financial need will be
eligible for a scholarship. Preference will also be given to graduate
students entering primary care, and planning to work in medically
underserved areas.
“This HRSA grant will allow us
to continue to strengthen and develop excellent graduate and
undergraduate programs that prepare nurses to provide quality care that
improves the health of diverse communities,” said Cynthia Hughes,
Director of the School of Nursing at CSULA.
HRSA, an agency of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency
for improving access to health care services for people who are
uninsured, isolated or medically vulnerable. Its mission is to improve
health and achieve health equity through access to quality services, a
skilled health workforce and innovative programs. For more about HRSA:
http://www.hrsa.gov/about/index.html.
CSULA’s nursing program, which
celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, is approved by the California
Board of Registered Nursing and received continuing accreditation from
the Collegiate Commission on Nursing Education. U.S. News and World
Report 2013 “America’s Best Graduate Schools” edition has ranked
CSULA’s nursing master’s degree program among the top in the nation.
CSULA is one of only two public universities in the Los Angeles area,
and the only CSU campus, listed in the top 100. For CSULA’s School of
Nursing website:
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/hhs/nursing/.
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Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 225,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six
Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to
the Honors College for high-achieving students.
Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu
in scholarships for nursing
students
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