After years of watching the three other undergraduate schools earn multi-million dollar donations, the School of Nursing is starting to catch up.
NewCourtland Elder Services, a Philadelphia-based company that addresses the needs of the city's elderly population, recently donated $5 million to endow and name the Nursing School's NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health.
This amount is the second-largest gift the School of Nursing has received in its 72-year history, the first being the naming gift for the School of Nursing's Fagin Hall.
NewCourtland's donation is part of the School of Nursing's $60 million Where Science Leads fundraising campaign.
"Providing support for nursing science is critical today at a time when federal dollars and nurses are scarce," University President Amy Gutmann said.
The Center, which will be housed on the third floor of Fagin Hall once renovations are complete, is the first center of its kind in the nation and "quite possibly internationally," said Mary Naylor, the center's director.
It will focus on what happens to people, especially the elderly, both physcially and mentally during major changes in their health status, such as the emergence of a chronic illness or changes in one's mental health.
The Center's research will be interdisciplinary in focus, with experts from many fields of study - not just nursing.
"There is an increasing number of elderly people in the nation," said Meleis, "and we have not yet developed the best models of care to deal with their growing needs."
"The Center is drawing on what Penn does best - creating teams of scholars and drawing on their ideas and perspectives to address important research questions about the care of the chronically ill," Naylor said.
Nursing officials say the sizable donation shows that people are catching up to the importance of nursing.
"This is a very significant and generous contribution for research and for developing evidence of quality care in the field of nursing," Nursing Dean Afaf Meleis said.
Naylor added that "this endowment really represents a tremendous testimonial to the value of nursing science and of addressing the major health issues nationally and globally."
The official launch of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health will take place at Fagin Hall on Oct. 31.
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