Our Priorities

Learn about Carolina Nursing’s areas of greatest need.

Give Now

New Nursing Education Building

At no time in history has the need to support the UNC School of Nursing been more urgent. As we face new and unprecedented global health crises, as our population ages, and as our health care workforce diminishes, nurses are becoming ever more central to the health and wellbeing of those in our communities.

As a leading provider of bedside nurses and nurse practitioners, educators, researchers and leaders devoted to public health and access, the UNC School of Nursing is uniquely positioned to serve the front lines of the most pressing health care challenges we face today.

Our critical barrier to further action? Resources.

Faculty Support  

With a nationwide nursing faculty shortage, recruiting and retaining top faculty is an ever-increasing challenge. Endowed professorships enable us to attract the very best nursing faculty to Carolina and keep them here.  

Endowed professorships hold a 10-year renewable appointment. This endowment supplements in critical ways a faculty member’s salary, benefits, and research support; honors past achievements; and offers encouragement to strive for continued health care discovery and breakthroughs that will benefit people in North Carolina and throughout our world.  

Endowed Chair

$5,000,000 provides $250,000 annually

Endowed Professorship

$1,000,000 provides $50,000 annually

Current Endowed Professorships +

Student Support  

In addition to the competition for elite faculty members, the School also competes with other schools of nursing for the best students. Often, the most critical factor in attracting the very best students to UNC and the profession is the financial assistance available to them.  

Each year we offer 250 scholarships totaling ~$350,000 in scholarship support from private donors.* But with 600 students total, there remains a great deal of unmet need. 

Scholarships offer students the opportunity to pursue their nursing education regardless of their financial situation. Students in all programs at all levels, from undergraduate to doctoral, benefit from scholarship support. Below are opportunities to support students: 

*AY2019-20 figures 

Establishing an endowed scholarship allows you to name a fund that will support Carolina Nursing students in perpetuity. A $100,000 endowed scholarship provides an annual $5,000 award and gifts are often pledged over a period of 5 years. To learn more about establishing a named scholarship at the School of Nursing, please contact Kelly Kirby, Associate Dean for Advancement, at Kelly_kirby@unc.edu.  

Fund for Carolina Nursing: Student Scholarships

You can also support nursing scholarships with a gift of any amount that is meaningful to you by giving to the Fund for Carolina Nursing: Student Scholarships at go.unc.edu/nursingscholarships or by mailing a check, made payable to the UNC School of Nursing with scholarships in the memo line, to the address below:

The UNC School of Nursing 
Attn: UNC Gift Processing Office 
P.O. Box 309 
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0309

Thank you for supporting Carolina Nursing students!


Thank you so much for your generous support of the School of Nursing, and for investing in my future and the futures of my classmates! I will be starting my career as a nurse in the Newborn Critical Care Center at UNC this summer. Your support has helped me get here and means more than I can say.

Chloe Boyd, BSN ’20

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you for making the Linda Waring Matthews Research Fund possible. Her memory will continue to live on in the work supported by this scholarship. As an oncology Nurse myself, I know too well the impacts of cancer on a community and I am humbled by your generosity and inspired by her legacy. I am a 4th year PhD student student and my dissertation study focuses on the experience of informal caregivers of advanced cancer patients, specifically those receiving an allogeneic bone marrow transplant.

Kelly Tan, BSN ’16, PhD ’21, 2019–2020 recipient, The Linda W Matthews Research Fund

With immense gratitude I thank you for my award. It is an honor to have been selected, not only for the monetary contribution, but more for the recognition of the great profession of nursing. It is my goal to continue the great tradition of Carolina Nursing wherever my career takes me and to make you proud that you support nurses.

Michelle Swinyer, MSN ’22