Twelve higher education institutions have received grants to share and build upon the lessons learned through an innovative and highly successful scholarship program for second career nurses, New Careers in Nursing (NCIN). NCIN was created eight years ago by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) to increase the diversity of the nursing workforce by providing scholarships to people from groups underrepresented in nursing to earn accelerated baccalaureate or master’s degrees in nursing. Schools of nursing that received NCIN grants for scholarships report great success in recruiting and retaining minority and male nursing students and making their institutions more diverse and inclusive.

The two new grant programs, Innovations in Accelerated Nursing Education and the Legacy Program, will fund teams of nursing schools that have received NCIN grants. 

Four teams of schools received Innovations in Accelerated Nursing Education grants of $10,000 each to develop and enhance educational projects to implement innovative approaches to accelerated nursing education that can be taken to scale and replicated in a variety of educational settings. The project names and grantees are:

NCIN Alumni Toolkit

New York University
SUNY Downstate Medical Center College of Nursing
Stony Brook University

Replicating an Innovative Educational Pedagogy for Physical Examination and Problem Setting Skills

Mount St. Mary’s College
Yale University

Gaming the System

Quinnipiac University
Southern Connecticut State University 

Strengthening Cultural Competence in Prenatal Care with a Virtual Community: Building Capacity through Collaboration

Ashland University College of Nursing and Health Sciences
Duquesne University School of Nursing

Another team of schools received a $2,500 Legacy grant to report on the impact on their institutions of participating in the program, and what has changed as a result of that participation. That project will focus on new alliances and partnerships. Those grantees are:

Creighton University
Nebraska Methodist College
University of Nebraska Medical Center

“We are so proud of all that NCIN has accomplished over the last seven years,” said AACN President Eileen T. Breslin, PhD, RN, FAAN. “Our grantees have dramatically increased their recruitment, retention and graduation of students from groups underrepresented in nursing. They have truly changed the culture of their institution, which is now more diverse and inclusive. There is much to learn from them.”

“It’s our great hope that by gathering the ideas and stories of our grantees, we can sustain and encourage replication of NCIN’s successful efforts, expand them to more institutions,” said David Krol, MD, MPH, FAAP, RWJF senior program officer. “These grants are intended to provide information that will help schools of nursing continue to do the important work of increasing the diversity of the nursing workforce, including nurse faculty, and increasing the number of nurses holding BSN degrees or higher.”

The 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, recommends increasing the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree or higher, and increasing the diversity of students to create a nursing workforce prepared to meet the health care demands of diverse populations across the lifespan. NCIN is helping to advance those recommendations by enabling schools to expand student capacity and by encouraging more diversity. Since 2008, the NCIN program has distributed 3,517 scholarships to students at 130 unique schools of nursing. 

To learn more about the NCIN program, visit NewCareersInNursing.org.

About NCIN

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) joined with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) to create New Careers in Nursing (NCIN), an RWJF Scholarship Program to help alleviate the nursing shortage and increase the diversity of nursing professionals. Through annual grants to schools of nursing, NCIN provides $10,000 scholarships to college graduates with degrees in other fields who wish to transition into nursing through an accelerated baccalaureate or master’s nursing program. For more information, visit www.newcareersinnursing.org.

About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

For more than 40 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve the health and health care of all Americans. We are striving to build a national Culture of Health that will enable all Americans to live longer, healthier lives now and for generations to come. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook.

About AACN

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is the national voice for baccalaureate and graduate programs in nursing. Representing more than 750 member schools of nursing at public and private institutions nationwide, AACN’s educational, research, governmental advocacy, data collection, publications and other programs work to establish quality standards for bachelor’s and graduate degree nursing education, assist deans and directors to implement those standards, influence the nursing profession to improve health care, and promote public support of baccalaureate and graduate nursing education, research and practice. For more information, visit www.aacn.nche.edu.