$4.75 million in gifts announced at VCU School of Nursing dedication

By Pamela DiSalvo Lepley
Division of University Relations

Virginia Commonwealth University today announced $4.75 million in gifts from VCU alumni to the university’s schools of Nursing, Medicine and Allied Health. The announcement was made at the dedication of the new, state-of-the-science School of Nursing education building. 

Dr. Michelle Romano and her husband, Don Romano, each have pledged $500,000 to the VCU School of Nursing. In addition, Dr. Romano, a 1984 graduate of the VCU School of Medicine and member of VCU’s Board of Visitors, has pledged $1 million for a chair in Family Medicine and $400,000 for endowed scholarships in the School of Medicine. Don Romano, a 1973 graduate of the School of Allied Health Profession’s Health Administration program, also has pledged a $1 million chair in the Department of Health Administration, School of Allied Health and $350,000 for endowed scholarships in the Department of Health Administration.

It also was announced that School of Nursing alumna Helen Birch of Lakeland, Fla., class of 1947, has pledged $1 million to the nursing school to establish an endowed scholarship fund. Birch’s nursing career spanned 33 years, 17 years of which were spent at the Polk County Eye Clinic in Lakeland where she ran a glaucoma screening program. Birch attended the building dedication ceremonies as part of her 60th class reunion.

“The School of Nursing building is an incredible facility that sets a new standard for VCU facilities. It will serve as a model for 21st century, state-of-the-science buildings on campus well into the future. The increased space and state-of-the-science facilities give the School of Nursing an improved ability to be a part of the solution to the nursing shortage by educating more nurses who will enter the work force as competent health care professionals. And as a top-ranked nursing school in the country for graduate programs and research, the school’s critical role in producing more nurse educators also will be enhanced.” — Eugene P. Trani, VCU President   “As a graduate of the VCU School of Nursing’s R.N. to B.S. program, I am incredibly proud of this new facility and its resources that will add to the quality of education that nursing students receive. This new nursing education building further symbolizes VCU’s strong leadership in preparing nurses and nurse educators that will help address the health care needs of our communities.” — Marilyn Tavenner, Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Commonwealth of Virginia   “The dedication of the new School of Nursing is an important event to nursing students, because it is such a huge milestone. It is a chance for us as students to be a part of the history of the school of nursing. In the old School of Nursing, as you walked the halls, from the pictures displayed, you were able to get a sense of the history of the School of Nursing and how far we have come, but to think that one day, our pictures from the dedication ceremony will be displayed in the heritage room and future students will be looking back at us, I’m sure would make any student proud." — Chantel Skipper, president of the VCU Student Nurses Association   “It’s so exciting just to be a part of this and we want to be able to give back in some way. Even though St. Philips closed in 1962, its legacy is still continuing through the scholarship endowment fund that was established in 1991. The endowment fund is a gift that keeps on giving and through it we can make a difference in the lives of many students and ultimately in the quality of nursing and healthcare.” — Arlethia V. Rogers, president, of the St. Philip Alumni Association, Richmond chapter   "AACN commends VCU for their innovative use of simulation to enrich student learning and enhance the competencies of professional nursing program graduates. Simulation is transforming the way nurses are educated today, and VCU is among the forefront of those institutions able to harness the power of this new technology." — Geraldine “Polly” Bednash, Ph.D., R.N., executive director, American Association of Colleges of Nursing   “My three years at MCV gave me lasting friendships. I received an excellent education and have always been a proud graduate. I can think of no better way to honor my experience than to help future generations of women and men realize their dreams to become nurses.” — Helen Birch, MCV School of Nursing alumna, class of 1947, and $1 million donor to the VCU School of Nursing

VCU President Eugene P. Trani said it is fitting that these generous gifts from alumni – a total of $2 million to the VCU School of Nursing, $1.4 million to the School of Medicine and more than $1.3 million to the School of Allied Health – were announced at the dedication of the new nursing building.

“The people in this building, the faculty and students, are all about giving of themselves to other people,” Trani said. “This new building will help them be able to give more, by educating more nurses to help ease the national nursing shortage and by improving the quality of healthcare.”

The $17 million, four-story facility includes a clinical learning center with human patient simulators in critical and primary care rooms, research laboratories, a community outreach nursing center, faculty offices and a heritage room. It replaces the former nursing education building on Broad Street, the old Cabaniss Hall, which was built as a dormitory in 1928. Several architectural and historical artifacts from the old Cabaniss Hall are incorporated into the new building.

An added feature of the building is a donation of more than 100 watercolors by Baxter Perkinson, D.D.S., VCU alumnus and former rector of the VCU Board of Visitors. The collection, painted specifically for the new school, is called “106 in 2006” and will be permanently displayed in the building.

“The building is really a visual representation of the art and science of nursing,” said Nancy Langston, R.N., Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Nursing. “The openness allows us to reflect on the beauty of our world, while at the same time, we’re confronted with the complexity and challenges of the vast amount of knowledge and sophisticated technologies of the 21st century that transform the way we work as scientists and the way we study and learn the science and art of nursing.”

In the new facility, students will learn on sophisticated human-patient simulators that can be programmed both to show symptoms of certain conditions and diseases and to respond to various interventions, such as medications. Students in the 150-seat auditorium will be able to watch other students working on the simulators and use hand-held devices to indicate whether they agree or disagree with a particular intervention.

“Nursing students also have the opportunity to learn from the best nurses in the profession through a partnership with Nursing Services at the VCU Medical Center,” said Dr. Sheldon Retchin, vice president for VCU Health Sciences and CEO of VCU Health System. “Our health system has been awarded Magnet status by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the highest level of recognition for nursing excellence in national and international health care.”

The VCU School of Nursing is one of the top-ranked nursing schools in the country for graduate programs and research. Over the past decade, the school has experienced dramatic growth in both enrollment and research funding. Undergraduate and graduate enrollment has nearly doubled from 444 in the 1990s to 924 this year. The VCU School of Nursing is ranked 27th in the country for National Institutes of Health-funded nursing research.