In January 2015, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – New Jersey Nursing Initiative awarded the Department of Nursing at TCNJ a planning grant—entitled, Redesigning Nursing Education to Address the Challenges and Opportunities of Population Health—that enabled us to identify the major strengths and opportunities within our BSN curriculum.
Strengths
- Substantial history in building and sustaining successful academic-practice partnerships
- Stellar reputation for community and civic engagement
- Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—a distinction shared by only about eight percent of colleges and universities nationwide
- Students aware of social determinants of health, available community resources, and need to view health from a broad perspective
- students are directly exposed to issues of poverty, unemployment, housing, lack of education, disparities and inequities, and the safety-net organizations/agencies in place to address those trapped in the negative end of these social determinants of health
- Strong program of experiential learning and teamwork
- simulation with both high fidelity and standardized patients
- transformational “4th-hour” devoted to experiential reinforce of each course’s content
- avenue in which new content and skills can be easily added to the nursing curriculum
- Professional role development within the curriculum
- three courses (12 credits) devoted to professional roles of learner, clinician and leader (Benner, 2010)
- Well-prepared, seasoned faculty that excels in teamwork and collaboration, and embraces innovation