GraduateNursing Programs

Nursing Graduate Program Outcomes (MSN level)

1. Demonstrate the appropriate specialized body of knowledge and experiential base for the assumption of roles within advanced nursing practice.
2. Integrate theory, knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with creative inquiry, leadership, and relationship-based care to inform advanced nursing practice and to foster personal and professional growth.
3. Engage in advanced nursing practice that promotes quality health care that is ethically based and guided by values of stewardship.
4. Use scholarly processes to improve practice and associated health outcomes through integration of theory, research, evidence, clinical judgment, and interprofessional collaboration

Program Outcomes

1. Synthesize knowledge from multiple disciplines/perspectives to assume clinical leadership responsibilities at the highest level of nursing practice.
2. Integrate theoretical and interprofessional collaborative skills in diverse and complex environments to influence health care outcomes and impact health care policy.
3. Engage in leadership roles based on values of stewardship to promote quality health care that is ethically based.
4. Use creative inquiry to generate knowledge and practice innovations through synthesis and translation of evidence from nursing and other disciplines.

Since 1982, the program has offered pathways leading to nursing administration specialization through first offering the MSA degree and currently the MSN degree in nursing administration. Currently, both the single MSN degree and a dual degree with business administration are available.

From 1994 through 2010 MSN degrees with specialization as clinical nurse specialists in adult health were offered. In 2000 the department began preparing adult nurse practitioners in primary care, and in 2007 the adult acute care nurse practitioner specialty opened. In 2012 all adult health nurse practitioner specialty programs transitioned to the adult-gerontology specialty, with the first graduates of these new specialties in

2014. Collaborating with the Hospice and Palliative Care department faculty in the College of Nursing and Health, the department was among the nation’s first to open pathways in 2004 to prepare nurses for advanced hospice and palliative care practice. The nursing faculty recognized the national movement to the Doctorate of Nursing Practice and developed a post-master’s DNP program that opened in 2009, with the first DNP graduates in 2011.