Glen and Becky Taylor have pledged $7 million to the Minnesota State University, Mankato School of Nursing for a new endowed faculty chair, a nursing institute and doctoral fellowships in nursing. The new faculty position will be one of the best-endowed academic chairs in Minnesota.
The Taylors’ gift will fund:
The endowed nursing chair will be held by a nationally prominent nurse-scholar who will lead the work and promote the mission of the Nursing Institute and its projects. The fully endowed fellowships will generate grants for Doctor of Nursing Practice students and their capstone clinical projects.
“Glen and Becky Taylor’s continued generosity will provide a sound foundation for our Doctor of Nursing Practice program, and will help to revolutionize the study of family health care,” said Minnesota State Mankato President Richard Davenport. “I fully expect that Glen and Becky’s gift will lead the doctoral program to national academic prominence. The Nursing Institute for Family and Society promises to make health care more meaningful, attentive and responsive to families. I am deeply grateful to the Taylors for their generous gift.”
The gift emphasizes the continued significance of nurses in health care.
“Nurses have always played a critical role in the health-care system, and in the future they will be more important than ever to the well-being of families,” said Glen and Becky Taylor. “We know that the new endowed chair, the Nursing Institute and the doctoral fellowships at Minnesota State Mankato will create models that will help nurses better serve all families.”
The gift is the latest of several major Glen Taylor donations to Minnesota State Mankato, including funding for the Taylor Center and the food science laboratories, and scholarships for students who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Taylor is chairman of Mankato-based Taylor Corporation and is a Minnesota State Mankato alumnus.
Led by a distinguished endowed chair, the Nursing Institute for Family and Society aims to:
“The Nursing Institute will encourage inquiry, discovery and innovation by establishing new state, national and international partnerships that will span the traditional health-care disciplines,” said Kaye Herth, dean of the College of Allied Health & Nursing. “These collaborations will create better health care models, and will recognize nursing as a critical element in the health-care dialogue.”
The endowed chair will promote the institute’s goals by developing family health-care forums, creating interdisciplinary community and academic partnerships, testing and implementing new models of family nursing care, mentoring other Nursing faculty members and students, and expanding funding opportunities for the institute.
The Taylor-endowed grants will support research by Doctor of Nursing Practice students and faculty – research intended to improve family and society based health care. The fellowships will allow students to gather information and test new health-care strategies, and will provide them with mentors who are researching or practicing family health care.
To encourage new ideas, the Nursing Institute will sponsor an annual, nationally recognized meeting that will focus on one aspect of family and society based health care. The event will bring prominent scholars to Minnesota State Mankato, and will encourage continuing dialogue among students, faculty and visiting scholars about innovations that link academia and clinical practice.
The institute also will establish an online colloquium to disseminate ideas developed at the symposium and refined by scholars. This “online conference” is intended to encourage collaboration among nursing scholars worldwide.
In addition, the institute will create a Synergistic Scholar Series intended to engage nationally recognized nursing experts who will visit campus to dialogue with undergraduate and graduate students, and who will mentor Nursing faculty members and Doctor of Nursing Practice students.
A national search for an endowed chair for the institute will begin immediately, and the new programs are expected to begin in the 2008-’09 academic year.
Minnesota State Mankato is part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, which comprises 32 state universities, community colleges, technical colleges and combined community and technical colleges located on 53 campuses across the state. The system serves approximately 242,000 students annually.
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