School of Nursing @ UNC-Chapel Hill

These are the remarks given by Dean Cronenwett at the Dedication Ceremony on April 29th, 2005

Good morning. I’m Linda Cronenwett, Dean of the School of Nursing, and I take special pleasure in welcoming you as we dedicate this spectacular and beautiful new facility.

Buildings are the embodiment of many people’s dreams. Without the vision and dedication of Deans Emeriti Laurel Archer Copp and Cynthia Freund, and the success of the programs they helped initiate, we would not be opening this new addition. Laurel. Cindy. Please stand and be recognized for all you have done to lead the School of Nursing to this day.

Buildings are not built on dreams alone. We’re grateful for President Broad’s leadership and the response of the people of North Carolina to the state bond referendum.

We’re grateful to the scientists in our School and University, whose external funding creates the knowledge we need to improve health care and also earns for this University the overhead funds that supported the construction of our research space and made it possible for faculty to teach and do research in one location on this gorgeous campus.

Among us today are other leaders - those who made leadership gifts that were essential to our success in the private part of our fundraising campaign. It is an honor to introduce them to you now, and I ask you to hold your applause until all are standing. From Hickory, Jane and Paul Monroe; From Garner, Bobby and Margaret Raynor. From Fayetteville, Doctor Franklin (and Theresa) Clark. From Raleigh, Tom and Jane Norris, and from New Canaan, CT, Jody Osborn. Please join me in thanking these incredible people for their generous investments in the future of nursing at Carolina.

Norma Hawthorne and Anne Webb worked diligently to make the entire building campaign a success. Each donor worked with and through them. I’m grateful for your encouragement and appreciation of each one.

Ten BSN alumni classes organized to make group gifts to the building campaign, infusing it with energy and excitement. The retired faculty joined together to collectively name the Garden Lobby. Those of you who were part of these campaigns and are with us today, please stand so we can thank you.

We’re grateful to all our donors and all the gifts, large and small. Our fundraising campaign was completed like the building – brick by brick. All of you -- alumni, friends, students, faculty, staff and adjunct faculty -- have given us the resources to celebrate together today. I personally thank you, each and every one.

Chancellor Moeser has recognized the work of our architects and builders, all of whom were wonderful partners with School of Nursing personnel. But many of you may not know that Chancellor Moeser urged the architects to add the covered walkway and many of the architectural features that grace the building we see before us. We thank you, Chancellor, for your insistence on these features that bring grace and pleasure to us and all of our neighbors here on south campus.

Assistant Dean Maggie Miller was our liaison extraordinaire with the architects, interior designers, and construction crew. Her sense of humor in her “construction updates” kept us laughing as the interminable hole in the ground made our dreams of new space seem like mere fantasy. You, and Sam Deal, our Facilities Coordinator, and Brad Volk and Sandy Funk and all the members of the Facilities Planning Committee – you helped us plan, and endure, and move…and move again.

I now ask the members of the audience who are our current faculty, staff, and students to stand. Thank you – each of you – for taking the construction in stride, for crowding together or moving offsite to empty one end of Carrington Hall, for enduring the noise and dust, and for packing and moving (many of you) in the midst of this busy semester. You have been part of this major milestone in the life of the school and pass on a wonderful legacy to future generations of nurses and the faculty who will teach them.

Nursing is a complex profession that has changed dramatically from the time when our first classes entered the School in the early 1950’s. We have gone from a profession solely concerned with providing bedside care, first in homes and then in hospitals, to one where nurses also deliver primary care, conduct research, lead health care organizations, and teach on faculties of research universities like UNC-Chapel Hill. Students study drug interactions with Personal Digital Assistants in hand and look for signs and symptoms of organ failure using a mannequin that can become any one of 25 types of patients expressing any one of 70 pre-configured high consequence health scenarios. When they leave us, they have developed the awareness and sensitivity for providing culturally competent care, and some have had study abroad experiences to reinforce this learning. Our graduates become leaders in all settings throughout North Carolina and beyond.

Our research faculty and doctoral students are leading and innovating in areas that are changing the face of how chronic illness is prevented and managed, addressing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, depression, and stroke. They are examining how to reduce health disparities experienced by disadvantaged ethnic groups and how to better meet the needs of vulnerable populations. They are exploring the influence of educational interventions in managing breast and prostate cancer and feeding issues of pre-term infants. As health care systems grapple with issues related to cost, access and quality, our faculty and doctoral/postdoctoral students are studying the relationship between financial performance, the level of nurse staffing and the quality of care.

Nationally, those of us in leadership positions in Schools of Nursing see challenges before us:

Huge demands for nursing care that will peak as baby boomers age
A looming faculty shortage of crisis proportions with the current mean age of all faculty at 53.5 years and rising
Growing health care costs that challenge us to find new ways to support the health of families and communities
Increasingly diverse communities that need us to educate a diverse, and culturally competent, workforce
Legitimate concerns about the level of safety and quality in our current systems of healthcare
Escalating public health and global health concerns related to infectious disease, environmental threats, and bioterrorism

What difference will this building make in the face of these challenges?

The building will help us recruit top-notch faculty, staff, and administrators for the School – in spite of the nursing faculty shortage. People we have recruited this year are overjoyed when they see the spaces in which they will work.
With success in faculty recruitment, we can grow our enrollments and and educate the baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral graduates needed so desperately by our state and world.
With adequate space, we can house the functions of all aspects of our mission – from continuing education and AHEC to academic programs to research. With funded projects onsite, faculty can work efficiently across all roles and be more available to students.
With adequate space, we can work together, relax together, plan together, and dream together.

When Dean Emerita Freund initiated the family nurse practitioner program in the early 70’s and when Dean Emerita Copp became Dean in 1975, no one could have predicted the impact that our current building, Carrington Hall, would have on people and healthcare in this state. People who worked here led the way – in establishing nurse practitioner programs, doctoral and post-doctoral programs, and accelerated programs for second degree students. Faculty research has grown exponentially and touches the lives of people in almost every county in North Carolina.

Fifteen-twenty years from now, what impact will the School have? There are so many possibilities – but here are a few likely examples.

Maybe the work being done by our faculty and doctoral students on the problem of obesity among North Carolina schoolchildren will change the physical exercise and dietary regimens of children throughout the country
Maybe the students going through our new psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner program will be providing care to the chronically mentally ill in community centers across the state
Maybe our pioneering work with the use of human patient simulators in undergraduate education will be replicated across the country
Maybe we will succeed, through our partnerships, with leading a movement to educate all health professions students for the kind of interdisciplinary teamwork that will ensure patient safety and the continuous improvement of our systems of care
Maybe the self-management interventions being developed and tested by our faculty will lead to fundamental changes in health care – where the patient is truly the center of control
Maybe what our faculty are learning about improving nursing work environments will lead to changes that ensure there will be nurses there to care for all of us when we need nursing care in the future

The School of Nursing has over 7,000 alumni now. Wherever I travel in the state, I meet nurses and nursing leaders who call Carolina home. When a beloved husband of one of our faculty members needed intensive care recently at UNC Hospitals, our graduates were there. When I had surgery last summer, the anesthetist was an alum. When I visit other Schools of Nursing in the state, our alums are teaching the next generation of nurses. When we host an international conference on the prevention and management of chronic illness with partner schools in Bangkok next January, our Thai alums will welcome us to their homes.

Regardless of the role we play, we are here because we believe in the work of nursing. As I was preparing my remarks this week, the director of our undergraduate program sent me a short piece written by one of our BSN students who will be graduating in two weeks. Pam Bowman was assigned to hospice for her senior capstone course, and, with her preceptor, cared for a 62-year old woman with liver cancer. She wrote the following description of her experience:

“We visited her twice a week. Each week she treated us like any of her many friends and family who visited continuously. She would sit in her comfortable chair, answer our questions and invariably the conversation would wind its way through our lives and our families. Her husband often said “this” was not in their plan. They had recently retired and planned to spend time at their beach house.

So it came to my last day of this rotation. There was a scheduled meeting that usually lasted all morning. However, my preceptor and I were called out of the meeting, as our patient had begun actively dying the night before.

We arrived and did our best to make her comfortable. Her husband and daughter were there. My preceptor left to get a suctioning machine and suggested I stay. I could see the changes but was so unsure of when she might die. As her respirations started to slow, I suggested her husband and her daughter take her hands and just talk to her. And they did. They talked about her beautiful azaleas that were just starting to bloom, despite the efforts of the deer to eat them. He talked about the first time he asked her for a date. Her daughter talked about when she was little and all the activities they shared. Her moaning stopped and her breathing slowed even more. The daughter and husband looked at me. In my head, I said, “But I’m just a nursing student!” To them I said “Get up close to her and help her let go.” She knew they loved her very much and she was gone.

It was my last day of my last rotation in nursing school. I feel like I can be a nurse now.”

Thank you for sharing your story with us, Pam. People may never know about this building decades from now, but there will be tens of thousands of them who will live longer and healthier lives or die more peaceful deaths because of the work we do in this new addition. As we dedicate our building today, we step into the future with you.

And now “thank you’ -- everyone in this wonderful audience--for participating in our celebration. Please join me and cheer or clap loudly – as we express our appreciation to our leaders and our commitment to each other, the work of this School, and to all that will be accomplished in this new building in the future. Thank you.

Construction is Done! Carrington Hall has a new addition.

Construction is Done!
Carrington Hall has a new addition.