Pulse - Fall 2005

              TABLE OF CONTENTS
School of Nursing looks to the future ..........1
Meet our Advisory Board ..............................2
Learning Resource Center slated
for upgrade ..................................................4
Spotlight on students....................................4
Doris Troth Lippman: Highest honors for
a job well done ............................................5
Gifts and grants............................................6
Sr. Mary Elizabeth O’Brien on spirituality
and nursing ..................................................8
Partnerships: local, national, international ....9
Our alumni speak ......................................10
SON proudly welcomes our new staff ........11
Message from the dean ..............................12
PULSE The
www.fairfield.edu/nursing
VO L . 1 , N O . 1 • FA L L 2 0 0 5
Jesuit. Personal. Powerful.
Fairfield University
Founded in 1970 with only 19
students, Fairfield University’s School
of Nursing (SON) today serves an
annual enrollment of more than 300
undergraduate and graduate students. In
fact, the School welcomed its largest-ever
freshman class of 64 students this
September.
Dean Jeanne Novotny, Ph.D,RN,
FAAN, likes to say the School “is 35 years
young,” and constantly evolving to meet
the diverse needs of healthcare profession-als.
This year, as the School celebrates its
35th anniversary,“the need for nurses
nationwide is greater than ever, and we’ve
established an aggressive four-year plan to
respond to that demand,” she says.“We’re
updating the School’s skills laboratory,
establishing a new multimedia classroom
and a demonstration classroom, upgrading
our wireless classrooms, and enhancing our
curriculum.” The School recently formed
an Advisory Board that will focus on
strategic planning and fundraising to
accomplish these initiatives and pursue
continued development.
It’s a daunting game plan, but one that
has already gotten a tremendous boost
with two generous grants from the
McKeen Fund, totaling $51,000.The
School had been working to create an
Advisory Board to guide it in strategic
planning and development, when James
Daly, former Fairfield University Trustee,
parent of three Fairfield graduates, and
trustee of the McKeen Fund, expressed
interest in helping. Besides allowing for the
establishment of the Advisory Board, the
grant has funded the launch of the nursing
lecture series which will kick off on Oct.
26 with celebrated neurologist and author
Oliver Sacks, whose books include
Awakenings and The Man who Mistook his
Wife for a Hat.
The Board has already secured 10
members (see article p. 2) but expects to
expand to twice that number. Chairing it
is Nancy Lynch, P’95, a volunteer in the
development field for 30 years. Both the
Advisory Board and the lecture series
will help the School address many of the
challenges facing the nursing field, includ-ing
the nursing shortage, the nursing
faculty shortage, and the evolving role
of the nurse.The American Association of
Colleges of Nursing estimates that 32,000
qualified nursing candidates have been
turned away from nursing programs
because of a critical shortage of nursing
faculty, a bitter pill to swallow because the
need for nurses is so great.
School of Nursing looks to the future
u Celebrating 35 Year3s of Le5adership in Nursing Education u
A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E S C H O O L O F N U R S I N G
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