School of Nursing Holds 50th Anniversary Celebration During Homecoming

School of Nursing Holds 50th Anniversary Celebration During Homecoming

On Saturday, Sept. 28, as part of Homecoming and Family Weekend, the DeSales University School of Nursing celebrated 50 years of undergraduate nursing, 40 years of graduate nursing, and 10 years of doctoral degrees.

More than 90 people gathered for a reception in the Gambet Center for Business and Healthcare, where nursing has been located since 2013.

After a short video, Mary Elizabeth Doyle-Tadduni '81, Ph.D., associate dean of the School of Nursing, welcomed the crowd remarking how inspiring it was to see so many classes from the school represented.

Founded in 1974 by Dr. Caroline Hollshwandner, the Nursing program has grown from the original undergraduate program to graduate nursing with the first Master of Science in Nursing class graduating in 1987. Eventually, the graduate program expanded to include the Family Nurse Practitioner program in 1998 and the Doctor of Nursing Practice in 2014. Graduates from all programs were in attendance.

Doyle-Tadduni thanked the faculty of the program and stated how in 2015, the program switched to, in her words, "the gold standard of accreditors, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. With the faculty's support, the program was given accreditation for 10 years, the longest possible time awarded by the CCNA."

Doyle-Tadduni then introduced Fr. James Greenfield, OSFS '84, Ed.D., president, who spoke of the University's core values, particularly the value gratitude as demonstrated by the support of the Nursing program.

Fr. Greenfield then spoke about the "dearth of quality nursing care and that DeSales was fulfilling a need in society for healthcare professionals."