18
Pulse 2010
Why we’re
No. 1 in nurses With more than 1,100 students enrolled this fall, the College of Nursing has grown rapidly to become the biggest in the state. But growth hasn’t changed the expectation that an East Carolina nurse be smart, savvy and dedicated to improving health care in the rural east. By Marion Blackburn Editor’s note: This feature originally appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of East, the magazine of East Carolina University. It has been updated for this special 50th-anniversary edition of Pulse. They wore crisp white uniforms, prim caps and a pin bearing the motto, Servire, when the first graduates of ECU’s new School of Nursing received their diplomas in 1964. The 17 graduates, all women, shared the belief that nurses should be scholars, as well as care givers. Today, the College of Nursing, East Carolina’s oldest professional school, provides the state with more nurses—women and men— than any other four-year institution. Of the roughly 26,495 nurses currently working in North Carolina who hold bachelor’s degrees from a North Carolina institution, nearly 11 percent or about one in nine got their degree from East Carolina. In 9 of 28 counties east of I-95, half or more of the nurses went to ECU, according to figures from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In fully half of those counties, 40 percent or more obtained their BSN from ECU. In 2009, the College of Nursing added another honor when the National League for Nursing designated it a Center of Excellence. Pursuit of this distinction began in 2005, when a task force began the required 50-page application and self-study package. In addition, of about 800 four-year nursing programs across the country, ECU
A nursing student assesses a patient at Pitt County Memorial Hospital.
“We take very seriously our commitment to serve. Our school has always been deeply engaged with our community and with the profession at large. We have aimed to be visionary in what we’ve done, from the start.” —Dean Sylvia Brown