The University of Maryland School of Nursing is one of 12 nursing schools nationwide to receive the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation grant to address racial inequities in nursing education.
The University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) has been awarded a grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation aimed at tackling systemic racial inequities in nursing education.
The $7,500 grant, “Eliminating Structural Racism in Nursing Academia: A Systems Change Approach to Anti-Racist Nursing Education,” covers a three-year period. UMSON is one of only 12 nursing schools in the country to receive the grant.
Yvette Conyers, DNP, RN, FNP-C, CTN-B, CFCN, CFCS, assistant professor and associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), said she is grateful UMSON was chosen.
“I was happy and thankful that we are going to be leading the efforts with the other 11 schools in this work and creating and sustaining that national presence,” Conyers said.
The nursing schools participating in the national project will form a learning collaborative to develop projects to address structural racism and promote anti-racist nursing educational environments at their respective institutions. The learning collaborative will meet monthly to report on the status of their projects as well as to learn from one another and receive feedback. Each school will develop and implement projects at their own institutions using the performance results from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s (AACN) Leading Across Multidimensional Perspectives (LAMP) Survey. Last year, UMSON was selected to participate in “Building a Culture of Belonging in Academic Nursing,” a national initiative to foster inclusive learning environments in schools of nursing. Pilot schools in that program provided school-specific data to AACN and, in return, received LAMP survey action reports in areas such as:
- curriculum and pedagogy
- inclusion and belonging of students of color
- inclusion and belonging of faculty and staff of color
- academic culture/environment
- clinical environment
“This continues to show our commitment to EDI, but specifically this is about structural racism and nursing academia,” Conyers said. “This really allows us to have a little bit tougher conversations.”