Elizabeth and Walter Nugent Foundation
Clarence and Inez Custer Foundation
The Clarence and Inez Custer and Elizabeth and Walter Nugent Foundations awarded over $150,000 to multiple IUPUC programs.
A $25,000 gift was made to the Cheryl B. Warner Mental Health Counseling Scholarship Fund for graduate students pursuing the Master of Arts degree in Mental Health Counseling. To receive the one-time scholarship, students must express an interest in working with underserved populations who are coping with mental health concerns. The fund is named in honor of Cheryl Warner, Ph.D. Associate Professor and founding director of IUPUC’s counseling program.
An additional $25,000 gift will support the renovation of classroom space at IUPUC into a functioning mental health care clinic. This new space will support the delivery of direct services to community clients by counselors in training. Faculty will directly observe trainees and give them feedback as they work with clients coping with a variety of mental health issues including substance abuse.
Since the program launched its first field experience in May of 2013, mental health counseling graduate students have provided 18,000 hours of direct service to community clients in Bartholomew County and the surrounding south central Indiana region.
Director of the mental health counseling graduate program Dr. Darrin Carr states, “These generous gifts from the Custer & Nugent Foundations will directly support our students as they learn in community-based field experiences, our new campus-based clinic, and the classroom. With these added resources, our faculty will be able to better recruit and prepare students for their future careers as mental health counseling professionals. As our graduates tend to live and work within 50 miles of IUPUC, the Custer and Nugent Foundations have invested not only in our program but the future mental health and addictions treatment capacity of the region.”
Focused on providing tuition assistance for IU School of Nursing students at IUPUC, the Foundations also awarded $98,000 to provide tuition assistance for students in the fall, spring and summer RN to BSN cohorts in addition to providing scholarships for students in the Accelerated BSN program beginning in the summer of 2019.
Indiana is projected to need over 62,000 BSN graduates by 2020. Nationally it is estimated that over 555,000 RNs and Advanced Practice RNs will retire or leave the workforce by 2022. Regionally, an adequate supply of BSN-prepared nurses will provide us, our families, and future generations the quality of care we want in our time of need, and leverage the significant economic impact from the job creation of this rapidly-growing career field.
These funds ultimately serve the constituents of our communities who seek quality health care and educational opportunities. The growth of the IUPUC Division of Nursing is particularly critical to retain a robust degree program that is responsive to the unique health care needs of the region’s hospitals, healthcare providers, and citizens.
The Division of Education received $4500 to complete a full class set (30) of Chromebook computers. Chromebooks are utilized by Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation (BCSC) and many other neighboring school districts across the IUPUC region. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States.
The 2016 plan articulates a vision of equity and collaborative leadership to make learning possible anywhere, anytime. It specifically recommends that teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities consider how to prepare future teachers better to design and implement transformational learning experiences enabled by technology in the classroom.
To support any of these efforts, please go to http://go.iupuc.edu/give.