UR School of Nursing gets HEED Award

For the fourth straight year, the UR School of Nursing was honored with the Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into

Diversity magazine.

The UR School of Nursing and the UR School of Medicine and Dentistry were among 46 health professions schools selected to receive the only national honor recognizing U.S. medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, osteopathic and allied health schools that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The schools are being featured in the December 2020 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.

“Receiving the HEED Award is a gratifying acknowledgement of the School of Nursing’s decades of work fostering an environment of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Kathy Rideout, dean of the School of Nursing and vice president of the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC).

“We’re proud of how much we have accomplished, but we also know there is much work still to do. We will continue to look inward with a critical eye, knowing that our vigilance and persistence is essential to continual growth.”

The UR School of Nursing is one of only nine nursing schools to receive the award in 2020. Its academic programs attract scientists, clinicians, researchers, and future nurses of varying ages, backgrounds, and talents. Its most recent class of students in the Accele rate d  Bach elor’s  P ro gr am   for Non-Nurses (ABPNN) includes students from across the U.S. and countries such as Nigeria, Mexico, Turkey, Jamaica, and Ghana. Thirty-five percent of the new ABPNN students are from groups underrepresented in nursing, and 25 percent are male, approximately three times higher than the percentage of men in the nursing workforce.