The School of Nursing recently received a grant for almost half a million dollars for its masters cohort program, allowing the competitive nursing department to accept double the number of students this fall.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded $450,486 to study the possibility of expanding the department's graduate program to other Bay Area hospitals. The fund will also help increase the number of graduate students preparing for the field.

The School of Nursing's masters cohort program prepares clinical nurse specialists. The program puts students in two work environments--clinical studies at a hospital and course work at the SF State campus.

Students currently practice at Stanford Hospital and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. With the new grant, the school may expand the program to other Bay Area hospitals.

"We expect the feasibility study will indicate the need to expand our cohort program to more hospitals, initially in the South Bay and on the Peninsula," said Amy Nichols, associate professor of nursing and coordinator of the program at Stanford/Packard, in a press release. "We want to start a class of students every year instead of every other year as is the case now."

The Stanford/Packard cohort program accepts 17 to 40 students every other year, according to Shirley Girouard, the School of Nursing director. With the new grant, the program will be able to allow 40 students every year, she said.

Girouard said the School applied for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant and worked closely with the organization to decipher the school's needs.

"The foundation is interested in the nursing services and education and other kinds of issues such as safety and quality of care," Girouard said. "We are going in a very positive direction and it will provide an opportunity to be able to expand our program."

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is dedicated to advancing environmental conservation and cutting-edge scientific research around the world, as well as helping to improve quality of life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The foundation was founded by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty.

"Any funding is going to reduce the burden of the school," said Stacy Serber, assistant professor of adult medical/surgical nursing. "Funding increases autonomy. The ability to support yourself as a school can reduce burden on your school as a whole."

"Grants are so competitive, especially in this economy," said Serber. "It's very prestigious that we were awarded with this."

John Minnett, president of the Nursing Student Association, stressed the need for this funding.

"This is wonderful news. The need to expand the program's capacity cannot be overstated," Minnett, a second-year nursing student, said in an email. "The present shortage of nurses in California, as well as nationally, is just a trickle in comparison to the projected shortage that will arrive in full force by 2015 when the faucet is turned fully on as the baby boomer generation retires."

Currently, there are approximately 150,000 unfilled Registered Nurse positions nationally, and the number may increase up to 750,000 by 2020 based on recent projections, according to Minnett.

"I whole-heartedly support funding that would ease the competition to get into nursing which has recently posed such a challenge for so many eager, promising students who would no doubt be highly successful if only they could get the opportunity to enroll," said Amy Dagdigian, a fist-year nursing student.

Dagdigian is a single woman who made a career change mid-life, and funding and scholarships have been vital to her ability to participate in SF State's nursing program.

"It's clear the long term need for nurses is out there," she said, "so the more we can support and promote education in the field, the more our local communities will benefit."