Emporia State University has received another major boost to its developing Nursing and Student Wellness building project.
The Sunderland Foundation, a Kansas City nonprofit foundation focusing on brick-and-mortar investments especially for higher education, health care and hospitals, has granted the project $5 million. Sunderland Foundation President and CEO Randy Vance says the foundation is “impressed by the transformational changes Emporia State is planning for the future and their commitment to investing in important academic areas like healthcare. Their visionary approach to preparing more nurses to serve our region after graduation made Emporia State a natural recipient of a Sunderland Foundation grant.”
ESU President Ken Hush says: “Educating the next generation of nurses is a tremendous benefit both locally for the Emporia area and throughout the region to address the current nursing shortage.”
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Brent Thomas says the new building will replace Central Morse Hall. Besides classroom and study space, the nursing area will include hospital simulation rooms and a multipurpose area with a fully-equipped kitchen for lessons on healthy meal choices. In addition to the classroom component, Thomas says the new facility will likely serve as an outreach center for school students, attracting potential students to Emporia State.
This comes as there are roughly 3,300 open nursing positions across Kansas. Emporia State anticipates over one million new nurses will be needed by 2030 to fill shortages across the country.
This also matches the Jones Trust’s $5 million grant for the project announced two months ago. At the time, the Jones Trust grant was the largest in Emporia State’s history. Both grants follow the ESU Foundation’s $3 million in unrestricted funds for projects like the Nursing and Student Wellness Center and the Kansas Legislature’s approval of bonding authority for the new facility.
Construction could begin next spring.
