Madonna University creates nursing doctoral program

Madonna University is stepping into the highest level of higher education by adding a doctoral degree to its repertoire.The Catholic university recently received a $750,000 grant to establish a doctoral degree in nursing. The idea is to create more nurses with doctorates to teach even more undergraduate nursing students, helping relieve the burgeoning nursing shortage.”There is a big shortage of people who can teach clinical nursing,” says Nancy O’Connor, professor of nursing and chair of the graduate nursing program at Madonna University.The Livonia-based university is teaming up with the University of Detroit Mercy to create the program, which started earlier this year. Madonna, which will receive two thirds of the grant, is tapping U-D Mercy because the universities are of similar size and U-D has experience with offering doctoral degrees.Both universities have had undergraduate nursing schools since the 1940s. The Catholic universities added masters options in the 1980s and 1990s. U-D Mercy plans to start its doctoral program next year.”This will really make a difference in Wayne County,” O’Connor says. “We’re taking a regional approach to this.”Source: Nancy O’Connor, professor of nursing and chair of the graduate nursing program at Madonna UniversityWriter: Jon Zemke