VCU School of Nursing’s NIH research funding rankings rise from 25th to 14th

By Malorie Burkett

Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Nursing recently jumped from 25th to 14th in National Institutes of Health research funding rankings for Schools of Nursing.

According to the NIH’s newly updated rankings, which are released annually, the VCU School of Nursing ranked 14th in the nation for the period of October 2003-September 2004.

“I believe this ranking will create a visibility for the school with faculty who might be considering a relocation, and it should help us in recruiting new faculty who are just completing doctoral programs and are looking for a school that is supportive of research,” said Nancy Langston, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Nursing. “A school could not achieve this level of ranking without some systematic support for the work of faculty.”

Langston said the new ranking was not the result of one significant grant. Rather, she said it was the result of a general increase in the number of faculty and in faculty who are obtaining support for institutes beyond the nursing institute.

Some of these include Nancy McCain, R.N., professor in the school’s Department of Adult Health, who received a grant from the National Cancer Institute for her work on women with breast cancer; Rita Jablonski, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Adult Health, for her grant from the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research; and Debra Lyon, Ph.D., a new associate professor in the Department of Maternal Child Nursing, who brought a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine grant that looks at a complementary treatment in alleviating symptoms of chemotherapy in women with breast cancer.

In addition, other new grants were included in the rankings, such as the Center grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research, which supports the development of infrastructure to help faculty interested in conducting research in the area of biobehavioral clinical research.

Langston said that the School of Nursing faculty in the mid-1990s endorsed the importance of research for a nursing program located in a major research university and housed on an academic medical center campus. The faculty identified that a primary focus of the research would be related to national priorities for the health of the nation and the national agenda for advancing the science of nursing.

Langston said the school established the NIH ranking as the benchmark for evaluation of success in its research mission. The target for this benchmark was to be within the top 25 Schools of Nursing in the nation in NIH funding. The school's rank has climbed for four consecutive years, from 84th in 2001 to 35th in 2002 to 25th in 2003 and 14th in 2004.

“This constitutes a story of extraordinary success created by a committed community of scholars, administrators and administrative professionals working together to achieve a goal,” said Langston.

The VCU School of Nursing is a comprehensive nursing school listed among America’s best graduate schools in U.S. News & World Report. The school also recently broke ground for a new $17 million, four-story, state-of-the-science, nursing education building. The teaching and research facility will replace the current building on Broad Street.