D.N.P. Program Receives $612,283 Training Grant
Virginia Burggraf
Radford University's Doctor of Nursing Practice (D.N.P.) program has been awarded a grant of $612,283 to be used to help support 10 full-time and 20 part-time students.
The grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through its Advanced Education Nursing Traineeship, which supports advanced nursing education specialty programs that educate nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, nurse educators, nurse researchers and scientists, public health nurses and other advanced nurse specialists.
The traineeship funds will be used by RU to support all or part of the costs of tuition, fees and textbooks for D.N.P. students and stipends for living expenses, said Distinguished Professor and Emeritus Scholar Virginia Burggraf, graduate coordinator for the D.N.P. program. The grant is only for Radford D.N.P. students pursuing the Nurse Practitioner or Nurse Midwifery concentration but not yet certified in those fields.
The grant will help RU to increase the number of health-care providers in medically underserved areas of Southwest Virginia, said Burggraf, who will direct the traineeship. Among her responsibilities will be promoting the D.N.P. program across Southwest Virginia, hosting an open house to recruit students and acting as communication liaison with the Veterans Affairs Nursing Academy, an initiative to ensure that highly educated nurses are available to provide premium health care to military veterans.
"A grant of this magnitude is not possible without teamwork," Burggraf said. She expressed thanks to Director Tom Cruise and the staff of the RU Office of Sponsored Programs and Grants Management, and to Wanda Nix, D.N.P. program specialist, for her role in researching information required for the grant application.
"To my students, the recipients of these funds, I wish to say: Use this gift, unwrap it often and serve others," Burggraf said.
A quarterly evaluation of outcomes and student progress will monitor the success of the grant-funded portion of the D.N.P. program.