Saint Mary’s College Receives $1 Million Grant
President Dr. Katie Conboy announced that the Lilly Endowment has awarded the College a $1 million grant to move forward on a new Center for Integrated Healthcare Education (CIHE) on campus. In an email sent to faculty and staff, Conboy said that having the funding through Lilly Endowment will enable the College to build on the strength it has established in health sciences disciplines, with an initial focus on the College’s nursing facility.
“Today’s medical and behavioral care settings use a team approach to meet patient’s needs,” Conboy said. “Students who are educated through an interprofessional model will be prepared to work and lead in their fields. The CIHE will not only prepare our students for contemporary healthcare, but we’ll also increase the total number of students educated in the health sciences.”
Lilly Endowment launched Charting the Future for Indiana’s colleges and universities in late 2019, making available more than $108 million. With the initiative, the Lilly Endowment invited all of Indiana’s 38 accredited public and private colleges and universities to consider what it would take to improve their efforts to educate students and prepare them for successful futures while thoughtfully examining the long-term financial sustainability of their institutions.
Conboy said the grant will fund the first stage of a three‐stage renovation project that will transform the first floor and lower level of Regina Hall into an advanced Center for Integrated Healthcare Education. The CIHE will encourage collaboration among Saint Mary’s health science and behavioral health programs and better prepare graduates for careers in healthcare and related human service sectors, which face hiring shortages and increasing skill gaps.
By sharing resources among existing health science and behavioral health programs, Conboy added, the CIHE further stands to reduce the cost to educate students for the College, deepening the College’s capacity to fulfill its educational mission while increasing professional capacity in integrative health care delivery for the State of Indiana as a whole.
Titilayo Ufomata, Provost and Senior Vice President, added that Saint Mary’s has long placed an emphasis on health sciences through its strong academic programs in nursing science, speech language pathology, social work and gerontology, and autism studies.
“We've built a solid foundation through our current programming to deliver graduates who are multi-faceted,” Ufomata said. “Yet, certain barriers impede the expansion of our programming. For example, the College’s Nursing Science program faces capacity constraints imposed by its facility, originally built in the 1950’s as an elementary school. The Lilly grant will put in motion our plan to graduate next-level students who can deliver superior care to individuals with multiple and diverse needs, utilizing a multidisciplinary approach developed through working with colleagues from other healthcare disciplines in the College."
