Hard as it is for me to believe, I will retire from Seattle University at the end of this Academic Year. On July 1, 2023 I will step into my ‘preferment’. It has been an amazing career filled with many blessings (albeit some of those blessings were well-disguised as challenges in their initial presentation). I have served as Dean of the College of Nursing for just under nine years. It has been a joy and honor to be part of a faculty and staff who are so deeply committed to pursuing our mission to educate and inspire leaders to transform health care for a just and humane world. Even more gratifying is witnessing the grit, passion and resilience of our students and graduates, especially during the challenges of the past three years.
With fondness and pride, I look back at the relationship between Seattle University and the Swedish Health System that evolved during the tenure of my deanship. I am still in awe that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 75,000 vaccinations were administered through the Swedish Community COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic at Campion Hall. One-fifth of the volunteers were Seattle University faculty, staff, students, alums, and trustees. I am particularly grateful for the “all hands on deck” response to the 9:45 p.m. call for volunteers to staff a late night clinic when a freezer from nearby health facility broke rendering hundreds of precious doses of vaccine in danger of warming up and rendered useless. With a mass email recruitment for volunteers, and news stories of the pop-up SU-Swedish clinic, so many people showed up to help that some volunteers had to be turned away. The joint commitment of Seattle U and our Swedish colleagues to serve our community was so evident that night.
Since I joined the College in August of 2014, overall enrollments have grown from 463 to 647 undergraduate students and from 172 to 317 graduate students. Annually, we now graduate approximately 222 BSN prepared RNs, 22 BS and post-bac certificate prepared Ultrasonographers, and 85 DNP prepared nurse practitioners. In addition, the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program was developed and successfully launched, the Diagnostic Ultrasound programs joined the College of Nursing, the academic reputation and U.S. News & World Report rankings improved, education of nurse practitioners moved to the doctoral level, and the College demonstrated its excellence through the successful re-accreditation of the BSN, DNP, and midwifery programs. When I retire the DIUS, DNP, midwifery, and BSN programs will be fully accredited up to 2026, 2030, 2031 and 2032 respectively.
As I look forward to my remaining time at SU, I am grateful for the generosity of donors, like Robert and Mary Bertch, who in 2022 established the Bertch Endowed Professorship in Nursing Leadership. With a focus on supporting the College of Nursing Dean’s contributions to academic excellence and compassionate leadership, the endowment will help to ensure the continued and future success of the College of Nursing. I’d also like to recognize our Nursing legacy donors and the ongoing support given to our students by the donors who established and grew our endowed scholarship funds during my deanship.
This spring, I hope you will join me on campus for the second annual Dr. Luth M. Tenorio College of Nursing Dean’s Endowed Lectureship on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. This year, I am pleased to welcome Tener Goodwin Veenema, PhD, MPH, MS, RN, FAAN, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a Senior Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In her lecture she will discuss “The Dual Crisis of Primary Care and Public Health in the US: The Role for Nursing.” More information about the event can be found here.
In closing, I want to say that it has been an honor to work with the faculty, staff, and students in the CON, to learn and grow in this Jesuit community, and to be a part of the Seattle University academic leadership team. I hold my dean colleagues and all members of the Offices of the Provost and President in highest esteem. Most heartfelt is my sense of Magis and gratitude for having spent this last chapter of my academic career at Seattle University.