Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus School of Nursing and New York
City Health and Hospitals Corporation Announce Plans for Undergraduate
Nursing Program at Kings County Hospital Center

Brooklyn, N.Y. - At a news conference today, Mayor Michael J. Bloomberg announced that the School of Nursing at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus and the Health and Hospitals Corporation will partner in a joint venture that is designed to help ease New York City's nursing shortage. HHC was awarded a $7,486,500 grant from the City to renovate a 14,000-square-foot space at Kings County Hospital Center that will house the School of Nursing Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Long Island University will sign a license agreement with HHC that will provide instruction to 60 nursing students each year, 20 from HHC, and the balance to be recruited by the School of Nursing. Classes will begin in the fall of 2009.

Brooklyn Campus Provost Gale Stevens Haynes said of the new partnership, "Our Campus has a long and productive history of working with the Health and Hospitals Corporation.  We are delighted that we have been chosen as the educational institution to spearhead this very important initiative."

Dawn Kilts, dean of the School of Nursing added, "This program has the potential to not only help alleviate the dire shortage of nurses in Brooklyn – which is the most severe in the entire state – but also to improve the economic future of the community. We look forward to finalizing the plans for this collaboration and to continuing the more than 50-year educational exchange between these two vital Brooklyn institutions." The dean noted, that admission and graduation requirements for the hospital program will be just as rigorous as those for the on-campus program, which includes the successful completion of two years of liberal arts and sciences course work. Students will attend full-time and must complete clinical rotations at Kings County Hospital Center, to satisfy the requirements for earning a baccalaureate nursing degree.

The Brooklyn Campus School of Nursing has more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students and is the leading provider of on-site nursing education programs at hospitals around the city. The School, located in downtown Brooklyn, operates a free preventive health services center, the Harriet Rothkopf Heilbrunn '32 Academic Nursing Center, which opened last January. The Center provides health-screening services for members of the campus community as well as uninsured and underinsured residents of Brooklyn.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.