{"id":220699,"date":"2024-10-30T16:48:24","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T20:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=220699"},"modified":"2024-10-31T08:06:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T12:06:10","slug":"groundbreaking-celebrates-state-of-the-art-nursing-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/10\/groundbreaking-celebrates-state-of-the-art-nursing-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Groundbreaking Celebrates State-of-the-Art Nursing Building"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Connecticut held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new School of Nursing Building on Wednesday, Oct. 30 amidst a crowd of students, benefactors, and University and state officials.<\/p>\n

Construction on the building will begin in November and is scheduled to be completed for the fall of 2026. It will be located on Bolton Road near the South Campus dormitories and strategically adjacent to existing clinical, academic, and research spaces.<\/p>\n

A $50 million gift from Elisabeth DeLuca \u201969 (NUR) will support the construction of facility for the UConn School of Nursing along with generous state support.<\/p>\n

Inspired by her mother\u2019s guidance, DeLuca pursued a degree in nursing and graduated from UConn. Her training and work experience as a nurse instilled in her a lifelong appreciation for both the professionalism and compassion that nurses provide. As her husband\u2019s business grew over the next several years, she joined him in running what would ultimately become a global restaurant chain. Today, she serves as President of the Elisabeth C. DeLuca Foundation and the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation, which are focused on access to education and health.<\/p>\n

\u201cNurses are a special breed, and if you ever have a chance to meet UConn nursing students, they are amazing and they get an education that will serve them well in life, not only in their profession, but in all aspects of life, and that\u2019s what happened to me at UConn,\u201d said DeLuca at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

\"Alumna
Elisabeth DeLuca ’69 (NUR) speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the new School of Nursing building on Oct. 30, 2024. (UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI have a passion for letting nurses be more prepared for when they enter the work force. We are working with curriculum ideas and other innovations to make them more ready to be practicing on patients and to face the real work of clinical practice,” she said. “I also think we have a responsibility to work with employers in the state to make the nursing profession be more respected and acknowledged, and have nurses be part of the collaboration with decision making in health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLuca\u2019s gift is the largest in the history of the University for any purpose. $20 million of DeLuca\u2019s gift will go directly to construction costs of the School of Nursing Building, while $5 million will fund equipment for the building, and the remainder of the gift will be used for student scholarships and programmatic support.<\/p>\n

The balance of the construction costs will be funded through UConn 2000 and State of Connecticut bonding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was reminded how important nurses were during the worst days of COVID – when no one was going to work, except for the nurses \u2013 everyday. They have heart, tenderness and save lives,\u201d said Governor Ned Lamont. \u201cAfter COVID, when things were settling down a little bit, I realized the long hours our nurses were still working.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found out there were thousands of people applying to be nursing students at UConn and we weren\u2019t able to place many of them. And Liz, that\u2019s why you are here \u2013 because you are a nurse, and you know what it means. You are giving nursing students the tools to think about how they can perform their job in a patient-centric way. We desperately needed this in Connecticut, and thank you for stepping up and doing the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUConn nurses have always been leaders and innovators who drive meaningful and important change in health care,\u201d said UConn President Radenka Maric. \u201cThis facility will position them as national leaders in their discipline, at a time when skilled and educated nurses are needed more than ever.<\/p>\n

\"School
Victoria Vaughan Dickson, dean of nursing, speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the new School of Nursing building on Oct. 30, 2024. (UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThanks to the transformative generosity of this gift, we will be able to provide scholarships and programmatic support for a dynamic nursing education that includes patient-centered practice, interdisciplinary research, and technological innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new building will be about 90,000 square feet and include the following program elements: instructional spaces, including a lecture hall and classrooms; simulation labsuite; human behavioral research lab; wet lab; student academic center; offices and support spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThousands of prospective nurses apply every year to join the School of Nursing, and in August we welcomed our largest ever incoming class. But as our School has developed and our national reputation has continued to grow, we once again find ourselves in need of a new home,\u201d said Dean of the School of Nursing Victoria Vaughan Dickson. \u201cNot surprisingly, it was a UConn nurse who came to the rescue. The tremendous generosity of alumna Elisabeth DeLuca is enabling us not only to move into the first-ever purpose-built home for the School of Nursing, but to greatly expand our programmatic offerings and scholarship assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom passed away when I was 14 from a long battle with cancer. I didn\u2019t remember the medication or the treatments that she was getting, but the one thing I remember is the nurses who took care of her,\u201d said Samuel Geisler \u201925 (NUR), the vice president of the nursing senior class, who is from Newington and a member of the men\u2019s track and field team. \u201cWhen I saw nursing was a major offered at UConn, everything made sense. Nursing at UConn has done more for me as a person than I could ever imagine. The School of Nursing has not only given me the knowledge and critical thinking skills to become the best nurse I can possibly be, but it\u2019s also given me the gift of compassion, ferocity and selflessness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alumna’s generous gift will enable the School to grow as demand for skilled nurses soars <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":220700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1727,1877,2472,2235,2227,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2113],"class_list":["post-220699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-construction","category-nur","category-gifts-donors","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:56:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220699"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220706,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220699\/revisions\/220706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/220700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220699"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=220699"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=220699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}