The University of St. Thomas debuted the Susan S. Morrison School of Nursing this fall, and its inaugural class of students are quickly approaching the end of their first semester in the program.
Susan Morrison and her husband, John Morrison, gifted $25 million to St. Thomas to help fund the Morrison Family College of Health, which opened in 2019.
“It was thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of today’s nursing students,” Director Dr. Martha Scheckel wrote in an email to TommieMedia. “The balance of faculty and staff have created a team to meet the multi-dimensional needs of students.”
Last summer, St. Thomas turned the Summit Classroom Building into the Morrison School of Nursing, which includes nursing offices, focus rooms and the new Center for Simulation lab. Scheckel said she is proud of how things are going and hopes to graduate an abundance of Tommie nurses to help with the current nursing shortage in Minnesota.
“My two favorite aspects of the program are the approach to the application process and our simulation lab,” sophomore nursing and psychology double major Leah Johnson said. “I feel like our program is very committed to our goals and training future nurses to the best of their ability.”
Since the program is new, the school is still adjusting and finding the right elements to make the program better, but Scheckel believes the program’s brightest days are still ahead of it.
“We hope to admit more students and assure that we have the faculty, staff and clinical sites to support them,” Scheckel wrote.
Maeve Walls can be reached at wall49822@stthomas.edu.