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History
of La Salle University Nursing Education
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La Salle University has been associated with nursing
education since the late sixties and early seventies
when contracts were signed with several Schools of Nursing
to provide basic science and arts courses to their nursing
students. In 1974, the Evening Division of La Salle
University entered into a dual enrollment program with
Gwynedd-Mercy College to provide a pathway to the Bachelor
of Science in Nursing degree for registered nurse students.
In this program the students were permitted to take
liberal arts and science courses at either
institution, challenge basic nursing courses through
a testing program at Gwynedd-Mercy, and then transfer
to full-time status to the Gwynedd campus for the upper
division nursing courses. |
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La Salle's
experience with the dual enrollment program highlighted
two facts about the Philadelphia nursing community
that demanded attention. First, because of the unique
dynamic of nursing education in the Philadelphia area,
there continued to be large pool of nurses in need
of a way to progress to the baccalaureate level in
nursing. Some institutions in the area responded to
this population of students by instituting programs
which awarded block credits for the nursing experience,
but then applied these as the academic underpinning
in programs in only slightly related disciplines.
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La Salle considered this approach unsound and of minimal
value to the nurse seeking higher education. Area
institutions that had generic BSN programs in place
offered limited schedules for the needs of RN students
owing to the limitation of enrollment in their programs
and to the timeframes in which courses were offered.
A large portion of the RN population has progressed
beyond the parental-support stage; they were responsible
for their own maintenance and often for that of a
family as well.
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School
of Nursing
1980 to 2001
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The
students could not afford the luxury of leaving work
to become full-time students once more. There was
no doubt that this pool of professionally competent,
registered nurses deserved a quality pathway by which
to progress in a reasonable manner to a higher level
of professional competence. It was to meet this need
that La Salle developed its undergraduate Nursing
Program. Download
this entire document for a detailed history of La
Salle Nursing (please
be patient...this is a 36 page Word document).
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Doris
Cook Sutterley helped La Salle Nursing to
be responsive to the needs of adult learners.
She also infused theories, principles, and practices
of stress and stress management into the curriculum
and the lives of her students. |
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