Graduates of UMSON's innovative DNP program reflect on two decades of learning and achievement.
The year was 2006. Twitter had just launched. “American Idol” topped TV ratings. And Pluto had recently gotten the planetary boot.
Among the nation’s earliest adopters of a first-of-its-kind clinical nursing doctorate, UMSON launched a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program that promised to position graduates — at the time, they were all master’s-prepared nurse practitioners (NPs) — for the growing complexities of American health care. DNP-prepared nurses, proponents said, would improve care access and outcomes and would infuse nursing schools, beset by retirements that had hollowed out classrooms, with a new wave of nurse educators.
With curricular guidance from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and designed to align with other professions’ doctoral degrees — pharmacists, physical therapists, and physicians all have practice doctorates — DNP programs were charged with producing nurses who could lead advanced practice at the bedside, in the clinic, and on the unit while also being prepared to assume the reins at the system level.
Championed by then-Dean Janet Allan, PhD, RN, FAAN, APN, now dean emerita, who’d garnered more than $2 million in state and federal grants to develop the DNP, UMSON was, from the get-go, all in on the new degree. While many other colleges and universities hemmed and hawed at program development, UMSON’s DNP launch was fierce, resolute, and early: It was Maryland’s inaugural nursing practice doctorate and among the nation’s first.
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE FALL 2026 ISSUE OF NURSING FOR/UM MAGAZINE.