The Dean's Corner

by Dean Judith Karshmer, PhD, PMHCNS-BC

It has been a busy year! The School of Nursing and Health Professions (SONHP) has experienced exponential growth in our programs, department, faculty, and staff. This is an exciting time and we hope our newsletter can help keep everyone informed and inspired. We are committed to changing the world from here and we thank you for helping us along the way.

We welcomed a number of new full-time faculty to the school. In future editions of The Bridge, we will be showcasing these amazing faculty and their work to advance our programming and positively impact health.

Our professional support staff is now close to 30 and they are distributed on the Hilltop, Presidio, and our additional campus locations including Orange County. You will be extremely impressed with their scope of work and how they advance the mission of the school. You can look forward to hearing from them as well in future editions.

Although we are happy to welcome so many new faces to our team, some longtime members of the SONHP community are retiring; Françoise Etchenique and Tom Wade retired in January and Associate Dean Pat Lynch will be retiring at the end of this academic year. Together they account for over 65 years of service at USF and will be so very much missed!

We have many more exciting changes to report! For instance, we received funding for a VA Nursing Academic-Practice Partnership (VANAP) with the VA Northern California Health Care System (Sacramento), secured approval from the California Board of Registered Nursing, and opened a BSN program with a Veteran focus with 20 students in fall 2014.

Our MPH program applied for and received approval from the University and our regional accreditors to offer an online option for the MPH degree, and we just received the necessary authorization to offer our DNP program online as well as on ground. The MS in Healthcare Simulation started last fall and the Bachelor in Health Services (BHS), a degree completion program, opened at the Santa Rosa and Pleasanton campus locations. Furthermore, in partnership with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, we plan to open a master’s entry CNL and BHS program in facilities in Orange County. This collaboration is an extension of the outreach and ministry of the sisters and is fully in line with the USF mission.

With all of this, we are always excited for what is to and may come as we change the world from here. We look forward to sharing our accomplishments and plans with you!